Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US • Hacker News Board

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#91

Post by __coaxialcabal » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

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…

At one point Miles asked Apotheker why he hadn't read Autonomy's most recent financial results around the time of the deal, asking incredulously: "You didn't have 30 minutes?" Apotheker responded: "I was running a $125 billion company, sir, and minutes are pretty precious."[1] [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/leo-apotheker-abandon-11-bil...

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#92

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #60

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tough to argue that HP wasn't mismanaged during this period, and therefore tough to assert that this mismanagement wouldn't have extended to Autonomy How is this relevant? If you get sold a computer, are delivered a turtle, and then kill it because you forgot to feed it, it can simultaneously be true that you were (a) incompetent and (b) defrauded.

In the context of DD, it's possible that these items were disclosed to HP and HP simply didn't care/think through what was going on. If the actions weren't criminal, but instead the result of a CEO/company not using accounting best practices/pushing too aggressively then HP may not have a civil or criminal case. The time that Microsoft failed to acquire Skype's IP comes to mind.

> The time that Microsoft failed to acquire Skype's IP comes to mind.

Huh, TIL! I had no idea about that: https://www.iam-media.com/article/648B260AFA518A71125F0E77C3...

That said, I don't believe that was why Skype lost relevance after Microsoft bought them: Microsoft was seemingly intent on compromising the Skype UX to promote the then-named Windows Live service - and they didn't combat the problems with spam on the service - and the ill-advised and ultimately reversed decision to force-convert Skype accounts into Windows Live accounts in a hamfisted way that left me personally with 3 duplicated accounts and no easy way of managing them - especially after they decreed that Skype will only support 1 account per Windows account in their flagship Windows 8-exclusive client and remove secondary instances from the legacy client, and the list goes on...

...I'd summarise it as them alienating their own fanbase and the tech-thought-leader community, which led to them (us?) seeking different platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger and Skype quickly becoming irrelevant.

When they relaunched Skype's new desktop client as an Electron app I knew they had stopped caring about it - because they immediately lost all of the advantages of having platform-specific clients, which is especially useful for video-conferencing due to the limitations imposed by Chromium (which are far better now than they were, but still...)

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#93

Post by arthurcolle » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9

bartread wrote: post #8

> But Dr Lynch has argued that HP used the allegations to cover up its own mismanagement of Autonomy after the 2011 deal. I have no comment to make on Mike Lynch's guilt or innocence in this matter, because I simply don't know enough about him or about Autonomy (despite working in an office just across the road for 3 years leading up to the sale)[0], but tough to argue that HP wasn't mismanaged during this period, an…

> tough to argue that HP wasn't mismanaged during this period, and therefore tough to assert that this mismanagement wouldn't have extended to Autonomy How is this relevant? If you get sold a computer, are delivered a turtle, and then kill it because you forgot to feed it, it can simultaneously be true that you were (a) incompetent and (b) defrauded.

This is a hilarious example. I hope I get delivered a turtle by accident some day.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#94

Post by trasz » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

anonymousDan wrote: post #89

trasz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re talking about Anne Sacoolas. There’s more to it: she’s a spook, and she fled on board of US military plane, lying about having diplomatic immunity.

Yes - my understanding is she was the wife of a spoon and didn't have diplomatic immunity? I agree perhaps there is more to it, but still it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

She (and US officials I think?) lied that she was a diplomat’s wife and thus had immunity. The fact that she’s herself a spook - and thus didn’t have immunity - was discovered later, during the trial.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#95

Post by kube-system » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

ris wrote: post #83

rwmj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that (alleged) accounting fraud against a company based in the US isn't a crime in America?

Has a US company that deals with a Chinese one be considered to have committed a crime in China if the Chinese decide they have broken one of their laws? And in such a case what are peoples feelings about extradition?

Usually when countries disagree significantly on law, they just don't sign extradition agreements. It takes at least two countries to make this decision. The US has not signed such an agreement, and thus, it doesn't matter what China thinks.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#96

Post by throwawaycuriou » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

trasz wrote: post #87

Lendal wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article makes it sound like the victim was HP, an American company, based in America. Did I misinterpret something?

It shouldn’t matter: jurisdiction depends on where the crime was committed, not on alleged victim’s nationality. This only happens one way, with extradition to the US, thanks to worldwide bullying.

As a US resident, if I rolled a large boulder downhill and fatally crushed a small child across the Mexican or Canadian border, would I be liable to extradition?

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#97

Post by paxys » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

As the article says, the deal was already investigated by the UK and they dropped all charges back in 2013. It is weird for the US DoJ to pick it up now, obviously on the behest of a large American corporation.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#98

Post by DubiousPusher » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9

bartread wrote: post #8

> But Dr Lynch has argued that HP used the allegations to cover up its own mismanagement of Autonomy after the 2011 deal. I have no comment to make on Mike Lynch's guilt or innocence in this matter, because I simply don't know enough about him or about Autonomy (despite working in an office just across the road for 3 years leading up to the sale)[0], but tough to argue that HP wasn't mismanaged during this period, an…

> tough to argue that HP wasn't mismanaged during this period, and therefore tough to assert that this mismanagement wouldn't have extended to Autonomy How is this relevant? If you get sold a computer, are delivered a turtle, and then kill it because you forgot to feed it, it can simultaneously be true that you were (a) incompetent and (b) defrauded.

Because nothing is that black and white. As regards the civil case you must be able to show harm. If I sell you a house with a foundation that is only built to last 10 years and then you burn the house down, you can't sure me for damages so long as the crummy foundation had nothing to do with the house burning down. To win damages you must be able to show harm. So the entire civil case hinges on the root of the poor performance of the company after purchase.

On the criminal side it's all going to hinge on whether the accounting practices rise to the level of fraud. That's trickier to nail down than you may think because a certain amount of liberty is often taken in trying to project growth, future earnings, etc. HP is likely going to present the subsidiary's poor performance as evidence that the accounting did rise above the level of normal wiggle room. The defense will surely attack that argument.

But as long as HP had access to enough of the company's finincial documents to identify the accounting practices in question it will be hard to prove out and out fraud.

Edit: ENRON is a good example because as clear cut as people believe that fraud was, it wasn't so obvious at the time. Writing down future contracts as earnings wasn't unheard of. They just followed that logic to an unsustainable conclusion. Which in the end clearly was fraud but it took hundreds of small steps and it's hard to say exactly when it did become fraud.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#99

Post by guiriduro » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

nyc_pizzadev wrote: post #42

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, round…

Sounds like something that would potentially be criminal in the jurisdiction in which the company operated, and for whom any questions of interpretation of accounting as criminal or otherwise would be wholly circumscribed: that jurisdiction is the UK. Nothing - especially a US-style "plea bargain" of trumped up charges threatening long incarceration unless the victim pleads 'guilty' to them, akin to torture in the worthlessness of any admission or incrimination of others so obtained - combined with jurisdictional overreach, this should be laughed out of court in the UK.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#100

Post by _2d30 » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #88

_2d30 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

no it isn't

I have a comment from earlier today that is downvoted to -4 and I can reply to it and other comments just fine. This has always been true for me.