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Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

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Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#381

Post by manquer »

dboreham wrote: post #362
manquer wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is unusual for the med tech industry, isnt it what startups do all the time ? it is not that surprising to me . It is not pure SaaS companies either, in the EV/self-driving space we have outright frauds like Nikola rolled a truck downhill to make the video and were public at $8 Billion. Others like Rivian/ tuSimple are definitely are not going to meet the projections in sales and plans they have published. T…

> isnt it what startups do all the time ? All the time? No.

Is this pedantic correction as in you would not comment had I said "most" of the time or do you mean to imply it is rare/uncommon/ unusual for startups to do so ?

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#382

Post by harha »

ghshephard wrote: post #372
harha wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder how much of the rapidly established covid testing infrastructure around the world delivers actual results. Fun fact: In some places like Singapore you don't even get the chance to test again to verify the result, you just serve your time in quarantine and then get back your "safe" status.

Probably for the best back in populations of close to 0 community incidence, low acquired immunity, and prior to the vaccines being available. Better to have a few hundred (few thousand?) people incorrectly spend time in quarantine, than to have community spread results in people/businesses being locked down.

That's the state right now with almost all of the population vaccinated.

I don't think it's for the best, it ignores any other medical conditions and offers no way to double check a result that could come from a dodgy test center.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#383

Post by blackboxlogic »

tptacek wrote: post #290
avirut wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does multiple counts served concurrently mean that the effective sentence is just the longest individual sentence? Also: I'm seeing from various websites that the maximum time-left-to-serve for minimum security (federal prison camp) is 10 years, but nothing definitive - [1] is the most in-depth but only specifies this requirement for male prisoners, whereas other requirements are clearly distinguished between male an…

Yes, the guidelines are kind of explicit about this for basic economic crimes. Ken White's the lawyer, though, not me! They're actually even more specific for fraud cases, beyond the general 2B1.1 basic economic crime rule of sentencing according to the most severe count; for fraud, you apparently sum up all the losses from all the counts, which has the net effect of bumping Holmes up 2 additional levels.

Taking note: parallel crimes are more efficient than serial crimes.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#384

Post by volkl48 »

javajosh wrote: post #51
daenz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a super interesting niche. Do you see returns on your investments?

I don't remember where I first heard this, but it's good advice: don't collect as an investment, collect because you really enjoy the objects. I collect rare books, but never because I think they'll go up in value (although they probably will). I just like having them around. Socially, infamous corpo-swag is really even better - what a conversation starter! But I personally wouldn't want that sort of stuff in my shar…

While I totally agree about not collecting as an investment, "because you really enjoy the objects as a person who likes this stuff" is probably not actually a terrible metric for future desirability of an item in a niche area of collecting. Other fans/collectors likely feel the same. Of course, it doesn't tell you if that niche will die out and no one will want anything, although I suspect rare books are less at risk of that.

As a collector of memorabilia for a band that's been around a while: The items I was drawn to, either because I just loved the look or because they were from a show/tour/album I particularly found special, have often turned out to be the ones that have appreciated much more in value than the average thing of that level of rarity for the band.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#385

Post by chihuahua »

berberous wrote: post #201
jonwachob91 wrote: post #40

It 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…

>> Investors know that every dollar they put into a company could disappear, it's why startups get capital from investors and not bank loans. The above does not excuse fraud. Investors know their investments are risky, but that does not give you permission to deliberately lie or mislead, with an intent to deceive the potential investor. For example, if you tell investors that you anticipate getting $50M in new contra…

In one sense you are correct, just because investors are knowingly making speculative investments, that doesn't make it OK to defraud them.

On the other hand, perhaps the argument was that investors know there's a risk and know they should be skeptical. It would be unreasonable to expect patients requesting a blood test to be suspicious and question the results.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#386

Post by duxup »

manquer wrote: post #320
duxup wrote: post #155

What always amazed me is they had nothing… nothing that could do the thing they claimed. To the point they used competitors machines to produce results. Pretty amazing.

While it is unusual for the med tech industry, isnt it what startups do all the time ? it is not that surprising to me . It is not pure SaaS companies either, in the EV/self-driving space we have outright frauds like Nikola rolled a truck downhill to make the video and were public at $8 Billion. Others like Rivian/ tuSimple are definitely are not going to meet the projections in sales and plans they have published. T…

I think most of the start up proposals are more “here is what we do, where we’re going to go and how”.

They may have nothing / not much yet… but you know that investing and generally their products are very “doable”. Online focused cleaning service for example… it’s a crud app, maybe they don’t get users and fail, but the service was doable.

Theranos claimed to already do the magic thing with blood (many tests with very little blood) that they simply could not do and never did.

Big difference is Theranos lied about what the could do. Rando start up who is honest that they don’t yet do the thing, no big deal.

You can take money and have nothing… fail, but if you’re honest it’s not fraud.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#387

Post by minism »

sharkweek wrote: post #25

This will sound weird but I am a collector of swag from large companies that have collapsed due to anything from mismanagement to outright fraud. While we're a rare breed there are others like me out there. Still, even with this oddly specific marketplace being small, let me tell you, the Theranos swag market is hot right now (check eBay if you're curious). Wish I had gone big on this one earlier, because I have a fe…

Happen to own a juicero? Its a dream to have that on a shelf one day.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#389

Post by taf2 »

jonwachob91 wrote: post #40

It 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…

Didn’t the FDA approve her tests…

Yup - https://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-gets-fda-approval-2...

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#390

Post by KumoriNova »

mdoms wrote: post #340
metadat wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully she'll get more, SV could use a good example. Otherwise it signals that wantrepeneurs can keep doing it with minimal repercussions.

Ok I'm not American so perhaps my perspective is different... More than 10 years would be utterly barbaric. The 65 years mentioned in another comment chain would be well beyond the pale. I'm no fan of Holmes, but what good does it serve to lock up non violent criminals for decades?

"More than 10 years would be utterly barbaric." False.

65 years in prison would be a fair sentence for her. Homeless people in America have been sentenced to over 15 years in prison for stealing $100. Holmes stole an order of magnitude more than that. The US justice system needs to send a clear message to the would-be fraudsters that there are indeed some very serious penalties for being a criminal in this society.

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