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Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan

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Re: Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan

#21

>> A prosecutor, Micah Fergenson, though, said JPMorgan “didn’t get a functioning business” in exchange for its investment. “They acquired a crime scene.” I do not understand how an acquisition this big got thru due diligence without noticing all the fake users. Anyone in corporate M&A know if it is normal to spend this much money without inspecting the goods? Seems like the most basic of OLAP queries and two days of…

One previous company I was CTO of got acquired by Amazon and they spent 60 days going through everything, including every line of code. I doubt a fraud of this caliber would have gone unnoticed with that kind of due diligence.

[deleted]

Re: Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan

#22

>> A prosecutor, Micah Fergenson, though, said JPMorgan “didn’t get a functioning business” in exchange for its investment. “They acquired a crime scene.” I do not understand how an acquisition this big got thru due diligence without noticing all the fake users. Anyone in corporate M&A know if it is normal to spend this much money without inspecting the goods? Seems like the most basic of OLAP queries and two days of…

$175M isn’t that big for JPM. It’s only 0.02% of its market cap.

Re: Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan

#23

>> A prosecutor, Micah Fergenson, though, said JPMorgan “didn’t get a functioning business” in exchange for its investment. “They acquired a crime scene.” I do not understand how an acquisition this big got thru due diligence without noticing all the fake users. Anyone in corporate M&A know if it is normal to spend this much money without inspecting the goods? Seems like the most basic of OLAP queries and two days of…

She pushed back on any direct vetting of the list using privacy laws as a shield and JPMorgan didn't challenge it due to competitive pressure to get the deal done ASAP.

Clearly, if only 10% of the list was real, it would be pretty easy to validate that with a small random sample.

Re: Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan

#24
At an investor event, a desperate journalist was running around the room asking people their age. He ended up at our table, with a drink in hand, and a defeated look on his face. He had given up.

We talked a bit, and he asked me, "are you under 30?" I answered "No. But this guy is." I pointed at the 28 year old cofounder of the start up I was part off. Before the evening was over, my colleague made it to the list of forbes 30 under 30.

Re: Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to justify it, but why isn't the founder of UPS (edit: Fedex) in prison? I don't think it was legal to go and literally spend their money at the casino. If you turn a profit no one cares (unless you're Shkreli, don't think his investors lost money, but he pissed off some politicians because he said the quiet parts out loud about how the pharma industry works), if you lose it's fraud. When all the winners are doin…

What are you thinking the crime would be? He bet his company on a literal toss of the dice instead of the routine figurative ones. Outside of Bribery and ?SarBox? (Whichever regulation handles kickbacks, etc), I can't think of anything.

[deleted]

Re: Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan

#26

>> A prosecutor, Micah Fergenson, though, said JPMorgan “didn’t get a functioning business” in exchange for its investment. “They acquired a crime scene.” I do not understand how an acquisition this big got thru due diligence without noticing all the fake users. Anyone in corporate M&A know if it is normal to spend this much money without inspecting the goods? Seems like the most basic of OLAP queries and two days of…

> Seems like the most basic of OLAP queries and two days of effort would reveal very suspicious userbase.

What would those queries look like?

Re: Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to justify it, but why isn't the founder of UPS (edit: Fedex) in prison? I don't think it was legal to go and literally spend their money at the casino. If you turn a profit no one cares (unless you're Shkreli, don't think his investors lost money, but he pissed off some politicians because he said the quiet parts out loud about how the pharma industry works), if you lose it's fraud. When all the winners are doin…

> (unless you're Shkreli, don't think his investors lost money, but he pissed off some politicians because he said the quiet parts out loud about how the pharma industry works) What's the TL;DR? His wikipedia page doesn't make it obvious.

Shkreli's schtick was to buy out or control pharma companies that had a monopoly and jack the everliving fuck out of the prices. He had some programs for uninsured people, but he would milk the insurance companies absolutely dry, which gave him some wild profits.

This made a bunch of powerful people absolutely enraged, as he was basically publicly bragging about jacking the ever living fuck out of the prices. Pharma companies do this but Shkreli would publicly say it and tell the truth that basically the other companies were doing it while pretending to be good people, and he was only being honest about it. Poor people were pissed because they were told they couldn't get their drugs (I'm unaware if the program that allowed uninsured people to get them for cheap was real or not), and the rich insurance people pissed because he was basically he was bilking them.

So they went back and discovered one or some of his other early enterprises weren't profitable, but that he had used money he made off his later pharma enterprises to pay back his earlier investors.

In trial, his investors testified they were happy with the situation, lost no money, and would invest with him again. But they still convicted him for fraud, even despite the 'victims' themselves did not believe they were defrauded. It didn't help that Shkreli is probably one of the most profoundly unlikeable people you can possible listen to, unless you're not bothered to hear a hyper-capitalist be honest about how they do business.

Re: Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still what she did was fraud. From the article - "Still, the judge criticized the bank, saying “they have a lot to blame themselves” for after failing to do adequate due diligence. He quickly added, though, that he was “punishing her conduct and not JPMorgan’s stupidity.” "

Not to justify it, but why isn't the founder of UPS (edit: Fedex) in prison? I don't think it was legal to go and literally spend their money at the casino. If you turn a profit no one cares (unless you're Shkreli, don't think his investors lost money, but he pissed off some politicians because he said the quiet parts out loud about how the pharma industry works), if you lose it's fraud. When all the winners are doin…

There is truth to this. She was exposed because JP Morgan ran a marketing campaign that converted extremely poorly. Better purchased data might've prevented significant forensics. The poor due diligence had already been signed off.

While she committed fraud, I feel sorry for her because of her naivety. It must've been a sick moment when they asked to examine the data during due diligence. If she'd known that would be used for marketing integration so quickly, maybe she would have backed out of the deal.

Re: Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan

#29

At an investor event, a desperate journalist was running around the room asking people their age. He ended up at our table, with a drink in hand, and a defeated look on his face. He had given up. We talked a bit, and he asked me, "are you under 30?" I answered "No. But this guy is." I pointed at the 28 year old cofounder of the start up I was part off. Before the evening was over, my colleague made it to the list of…

Do you know the journalist's name? I'd love to be part of Forbes' 10 billion under 10 billion.

Re: Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still what she did was fraud. From the article - "Still, the judge criticized the bank, saying “they have a lot to blame themselves” for after failing to do adequate due diligence. He quickly added, though, that he was “punishing her conduct and not JPMorgan’s stupidity.” "

Not to justify it, but why isn't the founder of UPS (edit: Fedex) in prison? I don't think it was legal to go and literally spend their money at the casino. If you turn a profit no one cares (unless you're Shkreli, don't think his investors lost money, but he pissed off some politicians because he said the quiet parts out loud about how the pharma industry works), if you lose it's fraud. When all the winners are doin…

why isn't the founder of UPS in prison? I don't think it was legal to go and literally spend their money at the casino

That was FedEx’s founder, Fred Smith. It wasn’t UPS

He only had $5,000 of funds remaining, which he gambled playing blackjack, so the potential loss to investors was small. He’d already lost almost all their investments through operating FeDex

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