Founder sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale to JPMorgan • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #287

throwaway2037 wrote: post #259

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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#362

Post by harambae » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #167

SapporoChris wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, thank you. I found the details here. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/startup-ceo-charlie-jav... “Javice perpetrated a $175 million fraud—repeatedly lying about the success of her startup company and even hiring a data scientist to create fake data to back up her lies. For that, Javice has been sentenced to 85 months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay over $300,000,000,”

I don't know how they run that in federal prisons, but in some states they'll just put that balance on your commissary account, so you'd go to buy some noodles and you'd be -$300m before you start.

I don't think they do that in FCI's (I have a friend in right now).

They do, however, have a cap on the commissary of like $400 a month or so. So even if you're a billionaire it's not super helpful (although you can probably cut deals to add a little bit to other people's accounts, etc..)

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

#363

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 7:02 PM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #356

TuringNYC wrote: post #339

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. 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 ca…

A key part here is that your advice to your customer is confidential. They simply should not release it unless it is under your letter of non-reliance. That said, yes, scammers are - by far - the most aggressive (they know they're scammers, after all, and you are between them and their goal, which is to get funded, not to provide a product or a service) but it is up to your customers to hold the line there. Weak customers may end up being intimidated, that can be an issue.

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

#364

Post by next_xibalba » Sat, Oct 04, 2025, 6:19 PM UTC

themafia wrote: post #355

next_xibalba wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This was a criminal act. Not a civil dispute. Crime disturbs the moral order of a society. The punishment should fit the crime. Here, this man stole millions of economic value (with some extortion on the side). That certainly warrants jail time, in my mind (and the court’s, apparently).

A crime’s punishment should hold the criminal accountable, mete out retribution, deter other would be criminals, and incapacitate the criminal so they cannot continue to harm others.

> I expect them to secure their own infrastructure better

Sounds a lot like victim blaming. You must subscribe to the San Francisco justice model where people are told they shouldn’t have anything in their cars and they should be left unlocked, else they deserve it when a scumbag breaks their window to burgle their property. I don’t. Fortunately, most of the rest of the world doesn’t either.

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

#365

Post by cheema33 » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 1:37 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #152

cheema33 wrote: post #136

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Video codec compression scams remained popular even in early 2000s. I worked for a very large public tech company. One of the top 10 in that era. And they fell hard for scammers from Las Vegas that promised revolutionary audio/video compression. We had to sign all sorts of NDA and couldn't look under the hood of what they delivered to us under penalty of breach of contract and all that stuff. I "accidentally" ended u…

> I reported the findings to my manager [...] the whole project got shut down and about 200 people working on project lost their jobs. Myself included. Good for you for reporting the threat. But I'm a little surprised that they let the messenger get killed along with all the other innocents. I knew someone who whistleblew to C-suite, about misrepresentations they realized, on something that was then an existential th…

> But I'm a little surprised that they let the messenger get killed along with all the other innocents.

There was bad blood between the managers. My immediate manager bypassed his immediate manager and went above a few levels. Top management lost all confidence in the team and decided to can the project. We were all treated as peasants and told to find other jobs inside or outside the company.

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

#366

Post by cheema33 » Thu, Oct 09, 2025, 1:45 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #262

cheema33 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video codec compression scams remained popular even in early 2000s. I worked for a very large public tech company. One of the top 10 in that era. And they fell hard for scammers from Las Vegas that promised revolutionary audio/video compression. We had to sign all sorts of NDA and couldn't look under the hood of what they delivered to us under penalty of breach of contract and all that stuff. I "accidentally" ended u…

> I "accidentally" ended up looking under the hood and couldn't believe what I found. I reported the findings to my manager and told him to do what he wanted to with that information. What did you find? Low bitrates? Smaller resolutions? Enquiring minds want to know.

It was not a very sophisticated scam. The vendor had rebadged an opensource software I was very very familiar with. The only changes they had made were to rename things and fudge the reported stats.

It was not all that dissimilar from what Nikola Motors did when they pushed a non-working Hydrogen truck down a hill and filmed it and said look, the truck is working great. They too were caught. And eventually got an Italian company to produce a truck and put their name on it. And then eventually went bankrupt. But not before the officers, including the founder made bank on the entire scam. CEO was convicted of fraud. But he paid/donated $1m to Trump and was swiftly pardoned.