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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

#301

>> 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…

- a fraction of the board gets all gung ho on buying something

- board-1 gets marching orders to do due diligence. those people are typically aware of the sentiment in the board. they delegate to their underlings and share what they think the board wants,

- if you say no, you are guaranteed to upset one of your bosses. if you say yes, its typically a positive (your boss is happy),

- most M&As are typically bad ideas. Its typically nobody's fault when the thing is written off by the next management and nobody seems to mind that much. People who waved through the due dilligence are proper executives by then and the cycle continues.

Incentives are mis-aligned, and on top of this there is usually (a) not a lot of time and (b) a veil of secrecy. Missing those fake emails does not surprise me.

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

#302

>> 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…

Back in the nineties, Philips was days away from signing a licensing deal for a revolutionary video compression technology that compressed whole movies down to 8KB. The former Philips CTO was a strong believer. And then the inventor died and nothing ever came of it. To be a fly on the wall during due diligence meetings between Philips engineers and management. https://lowendbox.com/blog/the-man-who-was-paid-e113000-f…

yahoo paid mark cuban 3bi for his lie.

they still have the domain lol broadcast.com

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of everything else, Scientist-1 doesn't come off looking too good. He was contracted to make a synthetic dataset, based on a small set of records which were supposedly randomly sampled from a larger original dataset. He didn't really have any way of knowing he was being lied to at that point, or what his work would be used for. But when he invoiced $13k for his services, including a detailed breakdown of what…

To complement this, once when I was earning some money to type documents through computer and print them for many purposes (rent contracts, college homework and others), a woman asked me to fake their printed pregnant exam which was saying that her wasn't pregnant, I rejected, she insisted to print a simple "Yes" and I persisted without a sweat! I was young at the time about 14 years old.

try to search for samples of lab results (OCR dev, long story)... don't include anything about pregnancy or any keyword even close to it. and you will be shocked how the entire first page will be services selling positive pregnancy tests. I had no idea there was a market for that.

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

#304

> “haunted that my failure has transformed something meaningful into something infamous.” Not a US resident, so this may be off-base, but IIUC this a student loan platform, or rather actually just a better interface to it?

It was a service that aided in filling out a well known federal form (for student loans). Similar to how there are multiple companies that sell a service to fill out (prepare) federal forms for income tax.

Why are these forms so complex? The eternal question. The tax forms companies actually lobby against simplifying.

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

#305

It's interesting to me that fraud appears to be a crime again, with Theranos and now this, when it was going on for so long and so obviously, and no one seemed to care when people were lying and frauding as long as it went on long enough for them to make a profit.

This lady could say that she was a victim of Biden justice dept. Say good things about Trump and follow it up with a large donation to Trump. That ought to be enough to get a pardon. This is exactly what the convicted fraudster Trevor Milton, founder of Nikola Motors did, to get a pardon. When signing the pardon, Trump said that he doesn't know anything about Trevor but heard that he likes Trump.

[deleted]

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

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good question. I did Googling. Here is what I found: From the US Federal Bureau of Prisons: https://www.bop.gov/about/facilities/federal_prisons.jsp > Minimum security institutions, also known as Federal Prison Camps (FPCs), have dormitory housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio, and limited or no perimeter fencing. These institutions are work- and program-oriented. The Elizabeth Holmes Wiki page sa…

The hardest bit of that Camp Bryan wiki is this disparity. Ruby Jane McMillan - part of a meth supply ring. Sentenced to 38 months, completed less than 2 years. Laurel Yurchick - had 50g of meth on her. Sentenced with intent to supply to 10years - not due for parole until 2029. So one was clearly higher in the supply chain yet got sentenced to a third of the time?

Who do you think had the better lawyers?

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people I know who made the 30 under 30 list approached it like a massive campaign they had to win. It was a full-court press to get in front of the right people and their startup's PR releases were all timed to impress for the 30 under 30 during that period. Maybe times changed since it became more of a running joke. At one point it was a selling point for fundraising that people would compete hard over.

Every person I personally know on this list made it their life mission to be on the list. It was lost on them that the whole thing has become a running joke that everyone else thinks is just full of grifters.

The one person I know who made that list drunkenly confessed to doctoring his high school transcripts to get into college.

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

#308
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be that you're not in a high functioning society, rather than the point being invalid?

The banks at the center of the 2008 crisis are largely international. Is your question about the entire western international finance system and all societies comprising it?

It's generalized to any grouping.

Having written laws means nothing when they are not equally enforced. Which is the norm in the West.

For example: Intentional wage theft.

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, hot take, but she defrauded a large corporate bank , big whoop if you ask me.

Strong anti fraud rules (even for massive banks) are a foundational part of a high functioning society.

> Strong anti fraud rules (even for massive banks) are a foundational part of a high functioning society.

Sometimes it seems we're missing most of the "foundational part[s] of a high functioning society" except the ones that serve elites (which then are so sacred *and must never be questioned).

Eventually people stop caring about the elite's protections, even if that breakdown is ultimately harmful. It's like the murder of that United Healthcare CEO. His company ground down the common man's benefits in a way that probably killed thousands (at least), but we're supposed to cry for him. Betray people long enough, and they're no longer interested in holding up their side of the bargain.

If they want a high functioning society, the elites need to work harder at holding up their end of the bargain.

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

#310

My favorite thing about this case is how she bragged to her lead engineer she wouldn't go to prison, "“Don’t worry — I don’t want to end up in an orange jumpsuit" when she was trying to convince the engineer to fabricate their user data. From the complaint: > In particular, CC-1 and JAVICE asked Engineer-1 to supplement a list of Frank’s website visitors with additional data fields containing synthetic data. > Engine…

On top of everything else, Scientist-1 doesn't come off looking too good. He was contracted to make a synthetic dataset, based on a small set of records which were supposedly randomly sampled from a larger original dataset. He didn't really have any way of knowing he was being lied to at that point, or what his work would be used for. But when he invoiced $13k for his services, including a detailed breakdown of what…

> she falsely represented that the data she provided to Scientist-1 was a random sample of a much larger database of Frank users

Makes me wonder if Scientist-1 believed they were merely anonymizing real data; and/or generating data for some other purpose?

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