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

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

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 366 posts

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

#351

Post by [deleted] »

quickthrowman wrote: post #315
brandall10 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but this is basic human psychology when power asymmetry is at play. Frank "held the cards" in this deal, so to speak, and was helmed by a CEO that demonstrated sociopathic tendencies willing to do whatever it took. You can of course hold to a particular standard, but if a competitor is willing to relax that standard, you lose a distinct advantage.

> Frank "[..] was helmed by a CEO that demonstrated sociopathic tendencies willing to do whatever it took. To be fair, Jamie Dimon also fits this description. This entire case can be explained thusly: “JPM had FOMO during ZIRP and agreed to a stupid deal without doing proper due diligence.” This deal would’ve never happened if rates had not been cut to 0%.

[deleted]

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

#352

Post by gmerc »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #261
realitysballs wrote: post #249

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.

Alternatively, a golden device to the right ruler also works

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

#353

Post by teraflop »

n2d4 wrote: post #280
teraflop wrote: post #124

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…

Hindsight bias, and you're wrong by saying that the $5k were conditional on the line item change (they weren't). Here's the quote from the indictment: > JAVICE responded to Scientist-1 that same day, “Can you send the invoice back at $18k and just one line item for data analysis?” > > Scientist-1 replied, “Wow. Thank you. Here is the new invoice.” Attached to this email was a new invoice, now for $18,000, with the pr…

You can call it hindsight bias if you want. What you seem to be saying is that your heuristics would have told you that Javice had no nefarious intent based on that exchange, and you would of course have been wrong. My heuristics are very different.

It is very obvious to me that the extra $5k was "conditional" because if Scientist-1 hadn't sent back an invoice for $18,000, he wouldn't have gotten paid $18,000.

I have never heard of a company giving a 40% "tip" after the fact to a contractor who was already billing $600/hour. It seems like Scientist-1 did not question this tip because it didn't benefit him to do so. He didn't suspect anything because he was motivated against suspicion. That's a lack of integrity.

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

#354

Post by next_xibalba »

themafia wrote: post #348
next_xibalba wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professional sports league games are the output of the efforts of thousands of people and billions of dollars of capital. The right to distribute video of those games are the largest part of how those leagues make money, as arranged by contracts and underpinned by intellectual property law. This is not a case of "you're just bottling tap water". There is tremendous value created by these leagues as represented by the…

> It is no different than stealing a laptop. I reject this assertion. > In fact, it's worse! It is not. If I can copy your laptop: You still have a laptop. I also have one now. So it's actually the opposite of worse. It's not nearly as bad. > Do you believe stealing laptops and selling them is criminal? Do you still have a laptop? Then why should I be punished in a jail cell? If you want to settle for cash, we can ta…

We likely won't agree on this. I think you're wrong and theft should absolutely be criminal, and theft of certain magnitude should result in prison time.

But, he wasn't sent to prison just for the theft and distribution. He also "illegally intruded into MLB computer networks" and then "engaged in an attempt to extort approximately $150,000 from MLB ".

He plead guilty to all of this. You think all of that should just be settled via lawsuit, too?

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

#355

Post by themafia »

next_xibalba wrote: post #354
themafia wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is no different than stealing a laptop. I reject this assertion. > In fact, it's worse! It is not. If I can copy your laptop: You still have a laptop. I also have one now. So it's actually the opposite of worse. It's not nearly as bad. > Do you believe stealing laptops and selling them is criminal? Do you still have a laptop? Then why should I be punished in a jail cell? If you want to settle for cash, we can ta…

We likely won't agree on this. I think you're wrong and theft should absolutely be criminal, and theft of certain magnitude should result in prison time. But, he wasn't sent to prison just for the theft and distribution. He also "illegally intruded into MLB computer networks" and then "engaged in an attempt to extort approximately $150,000 from MLB ". He plead guilty to all of this. You think all of that should just…

> "illegally intruded into MLB computer networks"

Well.. as you yourself said: they're a billion dollar company. I expect them to secure their own infrastructure better. One guy with spare time working from home bested them? The FBI is not there to cover corporate negligence.

> He plead guilty to all of this.

Then he almost certainly would have settled very quickly in a civil case.

> You think all of that should just be settled via lawsuit, too?

Yes. It's the appropriate remedy. It's the fastest and most direct path to justice for the harmed entity.

If you're still so thirsty for blood then ask yourself if simple probation with agreed restrictions wouldn't have brought about the same outcome. Would the NFL and MLB have felt just as "protected" with this simple jurisprudence?

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

#356

Post by dreamcompiler »

TuringNYC wrote: post #339
dreamcompiler wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've occasionally been asked by an investor to do DD on some inventor's idea. Whenever it's an obvious scam I turn down the job. If I tell the truth and say it's a scam, the "inventor" will sue me. If I lie and say the technology has promise, the investor will sue me when he loses his investment. There's no upside to a job doing DD on a scam.

>> I've occasionally been asked by an investor to do DD on some inventor's idea. Whenever it's an obvious scam I turn down the job. If I tell the truth and say it's a scam, the "inventor" will sue me. If I lie and say the technology has promise, the investor will sue me when he loses his investment. Wouldnt the non-confrontational approach here be to agree with everyone on a benchmark, build up the benchmark, and sho…

Probably. The problem is that scammers are very clever with demos e.g. there's always a battery hidden inside the free energy device and they won't let you take it apart. One can work around such obstacles with very carefully designed tests, but then the scammer makes up some excuse not to agree to those conditions so you have to go back and forth and it becomes so expensive to do the DD exercise that the investor cancels the project.

Some people might be able to make this kind of business work but I don't have the patience or the political skills for it.

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

#357

Post by jibal »

next_xibalba wrote: post #336
jibal wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Textbook ad hominem fallacy.

His views on whether he takes responsibility for his crimes goes directly to the credibility of his views on sentencing/punishment of crime.

No, they obviously don't ... which is why your comment is dead.

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

#358

Post by amelius »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #312
amelius wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the dormitory housing have internet? If yes, I wouldn't even mind sitting there for a while. Might even start a new company with so much time on my hands.

Google AI tells me: > No Internet Access: Inmates are strictly prohibited from accessing the internet. Honestly, I think it would be great to allow inmates to use the Internet for studying and building relevant job skills.

It should have a very strong filter, though.

You don't want inmates posing as children on Facebook, for example.

I suppose it's too easy to f* this up, so it won't happen.

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

#359

Post by ajross »

Calavar wrote: post #201
sailingparrot wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the line between "just cutting a few corners" and prosecutable criminality isn't nearly as bright as we in the peanut gallery like to think The line maybe isn't bright, but faking data to a potential buyer to make it appear like you have 15x your actual number of users is clearly way past the line you cannot see. That would be like saying it's hard to know if noon is during the day or night because the exact mo…

I think the difference is PG faked it until he could make it work at some future endpoint, Charlie Javice gave up on trying to make it work and instead faked it at the endpoint

But my point upthread is that that "difference" is a post hoc rationalization. She needed to close that deal to save the company, in which she presumably believed. The money would change everything, right? She probably did picture this as "faking until they made it".

PG "got caught" at a moment when Yahoo (the acquirer, I think?) had already decided on a deal it valued and was willing to deal with some accounting mess to close it. Javice got caught by an investment bank with rather different ideas about value who perceived the "accounting mess" as active fraud.

In a culture (this culture!) where everyone cheats, the actors lose sight of how to judge what cheating is acceptable.

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

#360

Post by bryanlarsen »

psunavy03 wrote: post #330
bryanlarsen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

classic article: Everything Everywhere is Securities Fraud. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...

Nice paywall.

Are you an internet virgin? Make yourself a shortcut to archive.is and stop whining.
Post reply on HN