Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 208 posts

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#131

Post by dragonwriter »

downandout wrote: post #114
wil421 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s not going to those kinds of prisons no matter what, if anything, he is convicted of. White collar crimes done by rich people go to white collar prisons. If you or I did this on a smaller scale we would probably go to regular prison but not a billionaire.

The kind of prison he goes to will depend on the length of his sentence. Federal prisons have a reputation for being relatively tame, but this is only true at the minimum security level. Inmates with more than 10 years on their sentences cannot be placed at minimum security facilities, however. The remainder of the security levels - low, medium, and high - are the the kinds of places you see in movies with all of the…

> For an $11 billion fraud, he would be sentenced to either life, or hundreds of years in prison

Well, none of the charges has a life sentence available, so that option is not possible. It does look like the statutory maximum for the offenses at issue combined is 280 years, but I haven't bothered to pull out the sentencing guidelines and see if, even, with $11 billion in frauds, that's likely without factors not obvious from the charges.

> and will regularly experience every horror that the US prison system is rumored to have everyday for the rest of his life until he dies.

Well, no, every rumored problem isn't real, and every real problem isn't experienced by every prisoner at all (much less daily.)

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#132

Post by _2d30 »

dathinab wrote: post #119
_2d30 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Excited to learn about the German prisons that respect human rights. The "prisoners" just come and go as they feel? The whole point of prisons is to take away a human's rights. That's like fundamental to the concept of incarceration. Or are you concerned with US prisons violating too ma…

Prisons are NOT meant to take away your human rights, they will take away some of your rights temporary but that's not the same. The main point of prisons is to temporary take away your freedom (which is often perceived as on of the most valuable rights) as a form of punishment for you crime, but that's where it stops. You are sentenced to 10 years of prison not 10 years of torture, and potential random death. If you…

> Prisons are NOT meant to take away your human rights

> The main point of prisons is to temporary take away your freedom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#134

Post by gnufx »

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…

This was supposed to wait on the verdict in the civil case brought by HP(E?) on that sort of thing, which at least seems right. The Register covered it in detail, and currently has https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/22/mike_lynch_extraditio...

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#135

Post by toyg »

dragonwriter wrote: post #115
trasz wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> jurisdiction depends on where the crime was committed No, it doesn't. Sovereignty is inherently unlimited. Jurisdiction depends on the law of the party seeking to exercise it. Bringing someone before the court with jurisdiction may sometimes require external cooperation, but the terms of that are products of diplomacy; there's no hard and fast universal rules.

This is a maximalist view of sovereignty that happens to be common in very few countries on the planet, namely the ones not afraid to use violence against anyone stating the opposite: the US, China, Russia, and a handful of rogue states.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#137

Post by LatteLazy »

analognoise wrote: post #101
LatteLazy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that is true. Maybe he'll get off despite being guilty? :)

The smiley face makes it sound like you think that's a good outcome for fraud?

No, sorry.

I won't comment on his guilt/innocent. I don't know either way.

My smile is bemused/embarrassed that we've reached a point where he will go and stand trial in another country for an allegation of something that happened here, and whether he is found innocent or guilty won't really effect my opinion of him because my faith in the system is that low.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#138

Post by Closi »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #92
lumost wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Unpopular opinion: The Skype brand was critical to getting decent uptake in Lync (rebranded as Skype For Business) and these users were migrated across to Microsoft Teams which has been overwhelmingly popular (at least in the UK it’s the de-facto conference app).

It’s not totally clear to me that Microsoft would actually be doing well in the space without the Skype aquisition, but considering they bought Skype for 8.5bn and Zoom now has a market cap of 100bn my assumption is that Teams is valuable and maybe the price was worth paying.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#139

Post by jessaustin »

slashdev wrote: post #65
coldtea wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trying to say they're somehow equivalent is whataboutism Which is another name for "putting things in perspective" and "addressing all bad actors, not singling out one for the benefit of the other".

No. It's another name for tu quoque, a logical fallacy by attempting to deflect criticism through pointing out hypocrisy. The Soviets used it as their go-to defense for their hideous system by pointing to racism, prisons, lynching, etc in the US. As if that made their shortcomings acceptable. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Whataboutism You can criticize some party or entity all you want, just make a logical argument f…

TFA does not mention DPRK, and this is the only subthread on this page that does. So, bringing this totally different nation into the discussion is itself fallacious.

ps. this is a better "whataboutism" link: https://theoutline.com/post/8610/united-states-russia-whatab...

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#140

Post by anonymousDan »

trasz wrote: post #94
anonymousDan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I stand corrected, thanks.
Post reply on HN