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U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

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Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#491

Post by downandout »

joering2 wrote: post #461
downandout wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record I have been predicting criminal charges in these threads for over a year now. You can’t make blatant misrepresentations that result in hundreds of millions of dollars being transferred to you without criminal charges eventually coming. I don’t think she did it out personal greed (except perhaps greed for publicity) - I think she believed she would probably make the tech work and just never got there. B…

Thanks for the overview I always enjoy reading your informative comments, and bookmarked you in the times of GDPR conversations. It doesn't seem that Holmes boyfriend is ready to plea, but even with 10-12 years, with all their fame and connections and financials behind, what do you think is final reality? Some 3-6 years for good behavior??

In the federal system, the most that an inmate can earn for good behavior is 15% off of their sentence - so the best behaved inmates serve 85% of their sentence. If the feds can get one of them to testify against the other (probably the boyfriend against Elizabeth), they may offer that witness a deal for perhaps 3-5 years. But at least one of them is going to do over a decade. Anything less would cause a huge PR problem for the US Attorney's office for the Northern District of California, precisely because she is well connected. They'd be accused of doing favors for a formerly wealthy, well connected person.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#492

Post by downandout »

MarkMMullin wrote: post #468
downandout wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record I have been predicting criminal charges in these threads for over a year now. You can’t make blatant misrepresentations that result in hundreds of millions of dollars being transferred to you without criminal charges eventually coming. I don’t think she did it out personal greed (except perhaps greed for publicity) - I think she believed she would probably make the tech work and just never got there. B…

I agree with all but one of your points, the projection of her mindset. I've known many good technologists driving for the next big thing, hell I've done it more than once. Usually we're a bundle of quivering insecurities with an unhealthy focus on all the things that are failing in the approach and a level of fear approaching utter terror that the entire thing is going to end ignominiously. My take is that she may h…

Interesting take. It's certainly possible that you are right. I based my thoughts on my impression from listening to her in a couple of interviews. I like to think I have a good BS meter, and it seemed to me (and apparently to her investors) that she believed in what she was saying, and was deeply passionate about the issues her company was trying to solve. I think she probably had a healthy dose of naïveté, and thought that with enough money, anything was possible.

Regardless of what was going on in her head, she seems to have made provably false statements in order to induce massive investments in her company. That's fraud, and she'll pay a heavy price for it.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#493

Post by nerfhammer »

api wrote: post #185
wpietri wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the patterns that interests me a lot is supernormal stimulus. An organism is evolved to deal with a stimulus in a certain range, and something comes along that is so far outside it that things break. The classic example is Niko Tinbergen, who created models of fish that were rounder and redder than the real fish, who would ignore other real fish and focus on the models. The human ability to refine things produ…

Wow. That is by far the most realistic and rational hypothesis for this phenomenon I've heard. It's simple, elegant, and seems testable. Thanks! I think this may also offer some explanation for the appeal of the utterly absurd, like flat Earth or galactic emperor Xenu. Its supernormally ridiculous, which invokes a sense of fascination. In any case if this is true I think this effect is being weaponized today to an un…

Sometimes I wonder if it's better for a religion to have strange beliefs:

1a) It's a better show of commitment to the group if you are willing to stand up and say the absurd on behalf of the group. It's saying that membership in the group matters more to you than the potential loss of face. You could expect to be able to rely on such a person to be loyal to the group.

1b) It's also a better show of group commitment if someone is motivated enough to try to convince themselves of something very difficult to believe.

2) Groups espousing weird beliefs will face ostracism, and that will bind them more to each other. They will spend more time with each other away from outsiders, developing their belief system further with even less sanity checking from the outside.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#494

Post by 2020-3030 »

save_ferris wrote: post #415
rayiner wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Too bad the US can’t retrospectively prosecute bankers for 2008 and claw back their size-subsidized, low risk premium profits. The Theranos case clearly illustrates why. Fraud by the top executives of a company, who lied about what their technology can do to raise a bunch of money, and endangered patients in the process--that is a story you can explain to a jury. Even if you think there are "bankers" (curiously, yo…

>Even if you think there are "bankers" (curiously, you do not identify specific bankers) who broke the law, good luck explaining to a jury exactly what anyone did that was illegal. Prosecutors who investigated 2008 came away saying that there was no evidence of criminal intent, based on the fact that they didn't break or intend to break any laws in the process of making their really stupid bets. Preet Bharara, former…

Iceland successfully identified, prosecuted, and jailed specific bankers for their roles during the 2008 financial crisis https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-31/welcome-t... and this article mentions "market manipulation and fraud".

A second article mentions, "He argues the crimes themselves are simple matters such as embezzlement, merely with a complicated “wrapping” of financial jargon around them." https://www.ft.com/content/dcdb43d4-bd52-11e6-8b45-b8b81dd5d.... This shows that prosecutions and imprisonment are possible for bank actions related to the 2008 financial crisis. Iceland's special prosecutor also believes that similar crimes were carried out in many other countries so the opportunity for prosecution was therefore possible.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#495

Post by techsin101 »

techsin101 wrote: post #454

Serious question were they both in sexual relationship... Because I feel the old Indian guy took over her... And influenced her to continue lies

yes they were.. found it

https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-inc-s-partners-in-bloo...

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#496

Post by mdorazio »

ggg9990 wrote: post #481
mdorazio wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure we can and do exactly that all the time. Case law established a very long time ago that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for illegal activity. The burden of crime is always on the person committing the crime, not the person inciting it, expert or not (there's a small exception here for entrapment, but that's completely separate from this situation). I could be wrong here, so if you or anyone else…

“Inciting” is exactly the name given to the crime of inducing someone else to commit a crime.

No, that's only for inciting physical violence (against a person or property) in conjunction with a felony. It would not apply to anything from the mortgage bubble. Unless you've got a specific law to reference?

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#497

Post by occamrazor »

celticninja wrote: post #480
occamrazor wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure in which country you live. Since the GP talks about the UK, It is good to remid that in the EU/EFTA victims of traffic accident are always entitled to compensation from a state fund, even if the driver or the vehicle is uninsured.

Yes but you know who pays that for fund? Everyone who pays for insurance.

Yes. It makes sense to share the burden among all drivers, instead of letting a few unfortunate people go bankrupt because of irresponsibility of others.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#498

Post by dragonwriter »

mdorazio wrote: post #453
dragonwriter wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, IIRC from reports years back, there is considerable evidence that this kind of fraud was not often not initiated by applicants but encouraged by lender agents, who were in turn encouraged by lender policies and incentive structure, which was set by lender executives. This isn't lack of diligence, this is setting a policy with reasonably foreseeable consequences.

Fortunately or unfortunately, "encouraged shady behavior" does not directly equate to "illegal". For example, if you encourage someone to steal a car tomorrow you're not doing anything illegal until they actually do it, they tell you they did it, and you fail to report it (accessory at that point). The actual crime part is on them. It's massively unethical and it feels like people should be in jail, but proving actua…

> For example, if you encourage someone to steal a car tomorrow you're not doing anything illegal until they actually do it.

No, you've committed the crime of solicitation at the moment you encouraged a particular person to commit a particular crime. And, if they agree and either of you takes any concrete step to implement the agreement (even short of completing the theft), you've both committed the crime of conspiracy.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#499

Post by dcposch »

resentfuljoe wrote: post #449

http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html 4. Naughtiness Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This qu…

PG is absolutely correct in my experience. The best founders are Chaotic Good on the alignment chart.

> Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties.

Holmes does not match that description at all.

Lying to investors, lying to the FDA, secretly using your competitors' tech to mask the fact that your core product does not work.

She did not care about getting the big questions right.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#500

Post by kwindla »

mhneu wrote: post #254
kwindla wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the John Carreyrou book, not so much her parents, but an early and enthusiastic sponsorship from an influential Stanford professor, combined with a truly outlier ability to network with and impress powerful people. She accumulated an amazing amount of social proof, which she used to stockpile more social proof, ad infinitum.

Didn’t Carryrou’s WSJ stories say that her parents’ govt connections pulled in Schultz and got her connected to the military? I remember his reporting implying that a lot of the money Theranos raised seemed like it came in expecting military applications and thus military contracts. Which the military board (that her parents connected her with initially) would have helped with.

I believe that Carreyrou's book says Holmes built a relationship with George Shultz, then Henry Kissinger, William Perry, and Sam Nunn, through Stanford's Hoover Institution. They were all fellows at Hoover. I'm looking at page 181 in the hardcover edition. The book doesn't mention any family connections to Shultz. The military interest originally came from James Mattis, then head of US Central Command. The book says that Holmes met him "at the Marines' Memorial Club in San Francisco," but doesn't say more about that first meeting.
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