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Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

bbc.com

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Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#41

Post by _2d30 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #2

Frankly I don't think anyone should be extradited to the USA. I just have zero confidence in the US legal system. Prosecutions seem politically motivated. Punishments are unreasonably harsh (I suspect to drive plea deals over actual trials). The quality of your defence depends entirely on how much you have to spend. And there seems to be a weird bias making prosecution and conviction of foreigners more likely for no…

> Being down voted on HN is really annoying because it won't let you reply if your down voted. Even to replies to your comment. Thanks for your comments, I'll try and reply tomorrow!

This is wildly untrue.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#42

Post by nyc_pizzadev »

Some details here:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-autonomy-cfo-sen...

> The evidence at trial demonstrated that for more than two years prior to the sale, Hussain, 55, a citizen and resident of the United Kingdom, used sophisticated accounting methods to falsely inflate Autonomy’s revenues to make it appear Autonomy was growing when it really was not. Specifically, Hussain used backdated contracts, roundtrips, channel stuffing, and other forms of accounting fraud to fraudulently inflate Autonomy’s publicly-reported revenues by as much as 14.6% in 2009, 17.9% in 2010, 21.5% in the first quarter of 2011, and 12.4% in the second quarter of 2011.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#43

Post by slashdev »

minikites wrote: post #39
eloff wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to drop North Korea from that to make any sense at all. Not only do they incarcerate far more people per capita than the US, but the conditions make US prison seem like paradise. No exaggeration. Prison in North Korea is much closer in spirit and implementation to Nazi concentration camps during the second World War, or the Soviet gulags. Many people die within months of being sent there.

>Many people die within months of being sent there. I take your overall point, but here in the US police just execute people on the streets and then face no consequences for doing so. I continue to think the comparison fits.

No. Trying to say they're somehow equivalent is whataboutism, it's insulting to the US and demeaning to survivors of North Korea. I know the US is not perfect, but you can't just go saying it's like North Korea.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#44

Post by hogFeast »

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #34

> Artificially inflated Can someone please explain why is this company any different than any US company? In my eyes they are all artificially inflated. I love Tesla for instance but please P/E ratio of 654.03 isn't that the same thing? (it is genuine question)

Because they were fabricating sales numbers, channel stuffing, misreporting expenses...Autonomy was a fraud, the numbers weren't real, the CFO is already doing time.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#45

Post by SirSourdough »

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #34

> Artificially inflated Can someone please explain why is this company any different than any US company? In my eyes they are all artificially inflated. I love Tesla for instance but please P/E ratio of 654.03 isn't that the same thing? (it is genuine question)

Tesla’s P/E is a function of stockholders inflating the stock price. The allegation here (by my limited understanding) is that Autonomy lied about how much revenue the business was actually generating. It’s not illegal to have your stock price inflated because of demand for the stock, but it is illegal to lie in your financial statements.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#46

Post by abz10 »

ffhhj wrote: post #26

> Mike Lynch sold Autonomy to US computer giant Hewlett Packard (HP) for $11bn in 2011. > He denies allegations that he fraudulently inflated the value of Autonomy before the sale. So the company is actually worth what? Let's say one half, $5 billion, and HP expects to make how much more? Let's say at least twice, $22 billion. That's a large margin. Unless they expected to make just $11.5 billion from it.

AFAIK it was good old fashioned accounting fraud. Losses booked as marketing expenses, lifetime revenue of contracts booked immediately, bundling overpriced software with underpriced hardware to change the revenue mix to get better valuation multiples. The fact that such blatant fraud could be missed for so long is an indictment of everyone involved.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#47

Post by [deleted] »

abz10 wrote: post #7
LatteLazy wrote: post #2

Frankly I don't think anyone should be extradited to the USA. I just have zero confidence in the US legal system. Prosecutions seem politically motivated. Punishments are unreasonably harsh (I suspect to drive plea deals over actual trials). The quality of your defence depends entirely on how much you have to spend. And there seems to be a weird bias making prosecution and conviction of foreigners more likely for no…

The Serious Fraud Office has corruption problems; so I wouldn’t expect much justice out of them at all. Mike Lynch is the bad guy in this. Autonomy was an intentional fraud that was offloaded into HP - with the help of Goldman Sachs and Meg Whitman (if my memory serves correctly.) The fraud was well known in the small Cambridge tech community as their former workers warned others about it. It’s hard to overstate the…

[deleted]

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#48

Post by NiceWayToDoIT »

SirSourdough wrote: post #45
NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #34

> Artificially inflated Can someone please explain why is this company any different than any US company? In my eyes they are all artificially inflated. I love Tesla for instance but please P/E ratio of 654.03 isn't that the same thing? (it is genuine question)

Tesla’s P/E is a function of stockholders inflating the stock price. The allegation here (by my limited understanding) is that Autonomy lied about how much revenue the business was actually generating. It’s not illegal to have your stock price inflated because of demand for the stock, but it is illegal to lie in your financial statements.

OK but how is that possible? Before you sell a company there is a long due diligence process, where all papers and everything else is given to inspection, and I can imagine team of 10 people lawyers accountants and experts going to every, note, paper and even paperclip.

Also isn't rule of market capitalism, if I am the seller I can put any price in the product/service I own, if you do not like my price you do not have to buy?!

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#49

Post by NiceWayToDoIT »

hogFeast wrote: post #44
NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #34

> Artificially inflated Can someone please explain why is this company any different than any US company? In my eyes they are all artificially inflated. I love Tesla for instance but please P/E ratio of 654.03 isn't that the same thing? (it is genuine question)

Because they were fabricating sales numbers, channel stuffing, misreporting expenses...Autonomy was a fraud, the numbers weren't real, the CFO is already doing time.

But how people from HP they have not noticed fraud during due diligence process?

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#50

Post by vmception »

dathinab wrote: post #6

As far as I can tell US prisons (in generally, not necessary all but I think most) are basically a heap of human right violations. In that context I think extraditing anyone to the US should be treated as a human right violation and as such should not be done. And even if we ignore their prisons from a German Law POV a lot of their law is fundamentally in conflict with the values represented by the constitution and m…

A US citizen in Norway escaped extradition to US for federal prison as the Norwegian top court reached the same conclusion
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