Anyone got suprised?
Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
581–590 of 1001 posts
Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Very little is known of Mr. Balwani, including why he is called “Sunny.” This might be because Saturday in Hindi and other Indian languages is “sunny-var”, and the day of the week you are born on is a common nickname, in conjunction with “sunny” being an easy to pronounce and common English word.
The one thing I remember distinctly about Balwani (although I can't remember where from) was him boasting about the 100k LOC he wrote while at Microsoft. Like it was supposed to be a badge of honour or indicator of intellectual prowess.
Late 2000s early 10s it was common to boast about having shipped 100 kloc to the point some companies asked about it in interviews
Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
Argh! The linked NPR article on that tweet had me yelling at my phone: > It is unusual for tech executives to face criminal changes when their startups collapse under the weight of unrealized promises. That's because it's not illegal to over promise about your future results. It is illegal to lie about simple facts regarding the present state of your business to attract funding. I'm so sick of so many press outlets f…
> No, Theranos was outright, egregious fraud, and most startups that "collapse under the weight of unrealized promises" are not committing fraud. Most startups don't get the traction and publicity that Theranos got, however. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of founders would go to similar lengths given the chance; they just happen to have someone apply some reality check on them before things get out of hand.
Lying about the level of development of your social app is also quite different than this
Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
They had a fully functional lab though, it just wasn't using Theranos' devices. This is what they did to Wallgreens, they sold them on the idea that they would have theranos machines in-store, but instead what they did was do IV blood draws (calling it a comparison check) .. and then would just process the samples the same way as everyone else using standard equipment. People were getting good results because Therano…
They were using traditional siemens for most tests but were doing some tests with a fingerprick that they diluted - like their PSA test sometimes coming back super high for cis women, indicating that they had prostate cancer.
Agreed, but the line of thinking is to try and prosecute this.
You'd have to prove to the court that theranos used their bad techniques instead of their good ones.
I am not as optimistic they kept such detailed records of their crimes, and feel this would be a tough angle to successfully prosecute.
Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
#585Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the global economy doesn't pick up soon we may see many more exposed. But next up I think wi be the Wirecard trial in Germany, if they find someone to prosecute
They have Markus Braun, ex-CEO, in 'Untersuchungshaft' / on remand in Augsburg, near Munich. He has been there for 1.5 years and will probably be prosecuted this year. In addition, around 30 Wirecard associates are being investigated[0]. Of course The One That Got Away, and likely prime instigator, Jan Marsalek, is oresently in an unknown location with a lot of money on his hands. [0] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtsc…
It was Jan Marsalek I was meaning, thank you for the information. If going into hiding is your response to the issue then you must be pretty sure of your own guilt.
Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
A colleague of mine was contracted by one of several firms tasked with liquidating Theranos' Newark facilities back in Aug 2018. I took the opportunity to grab the equivalent of $15,000 of tools, furniture, scientific equipment, and of course, swag. All legally - liquidators are tasked with clearing the site of everything by a set time. Had free reign throughout the facility for two days, scavenging through 200k sqft…
Huh. I never realized until this moment just how much I want to wear a work shirt that identifies me as 'Misty' from Theranos.
Thats: "Misty, Mr. Manager" to you
Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
#587What's the takeaway from this other than "killing people by giving phony medical test results is just fine, but don't you dare anger the wealthy"?
Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
#588It blows my mind that she was found guilty for defrauding investors, but not guilty for defrauding patients about their test results. Investors know that every dollar they put into a company could disappear, it's why startups get capital from investors and not bank loans. But a patient does not expect for their blood test results to be completely wrong. Her tests weren't giving false-negatives or false-positives, the…
Could it be related to the "Everything is securities fraud" [0] theory?
If it's easier to prove that someone defrauded investors, then this is what prosecutors will go for.
Side note: I highly recommend subscribing to Matt Levine's newsletter.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-03/goldma...
> As I often write, this theory can turn anything bad that a public company does into securities fraud [...] The stock will drop (because the bad things are bad for the company); the shareholders will sue, saying “you said you were good, we believed you, we bought the stock, but you were bad and we lost money.” And so climate change and sexual harassment and lax customer data protections and mistreatment of orcas can all be transmuted into securities fraud.
Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Fake it till you make it" originally meant behaving as an established company would, as opposed to presenting yourself as an upstart startup without a lot of customers. Basically: Professional website, formal company structure, normal business sales practices, having people available to answer the phones, and so on. You still had to do the work and deliver the results, but the goal was to overcome hesitancy to use s…
It's fairly common to see an element of outright fakery before the hopeful -but-not-guaranteed "till you make it". A coworker was using a mobile app from a startup offering to do "receipt OCR using AI/ML" when in fact they were sending most of the scanned pictures to a call-center in India to be manually entered. They hadn't yet figured out the fancy image recognition algorithm, so they were just throwing AWS Mechani…
There are two parts to this comparison. The first is, do they outright lie. If they are claiming "we are using AI" to investors, that might be fraud. But that is avoidable with just adding in "we are using AI for some receipts".
The second, and more important, question is, are they harming customers. Theranus gave people unreliable blood test results and lied about their reliability. That does actual harm to customers. Whereas for scanning receipts the only thing a customer really cares about is accuracy.
Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
#590What's the takeaway from this other than "killing people by giving phony medical test results is just fine, but don't you dare anger the wealthy"?
The cynic in me says that this is a master class in stakeholder management imo.
It is crucial to understand what is the cost of doing business vs what will sink the ship.