14 ms·

Ex-Professor Says Dismissed Racketeering Case Is Still ‘Devastating’

160 points by mtg 9y ago

kt9 9y ago
> He started chip companies on the side, which Georgia Tech encouraged, eager to see successful university spinoffs that had showered riches and prestige on Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other top computer engineering schools. And now there will be no more academics at Georgia Tech working to spinoff companies that shower riches on their benefactor universities. The bureaucracy strikes again and kills innovation.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  That's probably necessary in public universities. In my region, there are two institutions with leadership that let power and influence in these areas get to their heads. First, there's private RPI, where the president is basically looting the school for a decade, but the board does nothing. Then look at the sad tale of SUNY Poly, where its president did some pretty amazing things along with some... other things that would have been survivable in a private environment but a death sentence in the public sector. Unless you're a political person with the ability to stay at "arms length" with campaign funds and PACs, you cannot work for government entities and be safely involved with any significant business activity that is potentially related to your public employment. Even if you're able to do so, any misstep, greedy mistake, illegal act, or other screw up will be exponentially more dangerous. Linkage: RPI: https://news.vice.com/article/americas-highest-paid-college-president-is-dragging-her-school-into-crippling-debt https://news.vice.com/article/americas-highest-paid-college-... SUNY Poly: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/nyregion/physicist-in-albany-corruption-case-was-a-geek-with-big-goals.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/nyregion/physicist-in-...
  - azernik 9y ago
    UC Berkeley seems to handle this process just fine.
    - castellar 9y ago
      Could you or someone possibly elaborate on this? Why does UC Berkeley have so much better luck with startups and spin-off companies/technologies when compared to other public institutions?
      - azernik 9y ago
        It has an institutional culture (in the bureaucracy) of nurturing those startups. In particular, it has a very clear and permissive procedure for transferring work to private companies (see [1], under Outgoing MTA). You tell the university what materials (including IP) you want to use in your company, and the university negotiates a direct quid pro quo. The Georgia Tech process, by contrast, seems totally ad hoc and amateur. "You can take stuff for free up to a point, as long as you agree to certain investment agreements with the university, and if you step over one of our unclear lines we will slap you down." [1] http://ipira.berkeley.edu/material-transfer-agreements http://ipira.berkeley.edu/material-transfer-agreements
  - eastWestMath 9y ago
    Also, professors do steal money. There's all sorts of guidelines at my university now about how grant money can be used because a prof in the medical school used a grant for cancer research to renovate his kitchen (more or less).
lastofus 9y ago
> Last October, a judge tossed out the state’s case before a trial, ruling that the five-year statute of limitations had expired on the misdeeds that it had accused Dr. Laskar of committing. The way it ended didn't help. It would have been better if it were thrown out because it was obviously BS, or if it went to trial and he were exonerated.
fake-name 9y ago
> He had previously remained silent to avoid antagonizing prosecutors, who still hold family items with sentimental value, like a laptop with the only copies of childhood photographs of Dr. Laskar’s three daughters and an unfinished novel by his wife. Like, what the fuck? Why do prosecutors have such broad control over something that should be held by a independent party? The justice system is so fucked.
- emiliobumachar 9y ago
  There should be a right to copies of one's seized electronics' contents if not returned in a reasonable period. Also, what is the justification for keeping them after the case was dismissed?
- salesguy222 9y ago
  It certainly is. Many decades of misplaced public morality and "desire for justice" has turned the justice system into an apparatus that is entirely overreaching yet still tremendously powerful. Public support for it is still there from those who use the internet a bit less and those who don't see grave injustices as anything but "i'm sorry that happened" or "they probably deserved it" I don't mean to be fatalist but there really is no fixing this in the short or mid term; and in the long term, you would need some really mystical power to change the culture and practices technology has exposed to us all how bad the justice system is, but technology has also made the justice system even more egregiously corrupt and powerful
- syshum 9y ago
  >>>The justice system is so fucked. That is because we do not have a justice system. We have a Legal System The rules, the process, the procedure are what is important in our system. Any Justice obtained is secondary to the legal process and legal procedures
rl3 9y ago
>For one thing, a state grand jury didn’t indict him on racketeering charges until late December 2014, more than four and a half years after the raids on Dr. Laskar’s home and office in May 2010. The delay in indictment aside, it appears they've been holding his personal devices hostage for nearly seven years now. >He had previously remained silent to avoid antagonizing prosecutors, who still hold family items with sentimental value, like a laptop with the only copies of childhood photographs of Dr. Laskar’s three daughters and an unfinished novel by his wife. Theoretically, not speaking up offers the prosecutors more incentive to retain possession, especially if they know that's the reason for the silence. Device seizure without prompt imaging and return of the hardware is bullshit in all but the most grievous cases (e.g. terrorism). While many people who have been through extended litigation or criminal proceedings just want it to end, it seems like this guy was railroaded pretty hard. Does he have cause to sue the state, university, or both?
- dllthomas 9y ago
  > Device seizure without prompt imaging and return of the hardware is bullshit in all but the most grievous cases (e.g. terrorism). I don't think grievousness alone should be enough. Refusal to return the devices should also be predicated on some sort of substantiated belief that returning the devices would lead to some sort of harm. Possibly the case in your terrorism example; clearly not, here.
srtjstjsj 9y ago
The original story explains how this was likely a jealous colleague at GT, who called in the state guns to get revenge. The prosecutor's extreme delay and then "accidentally" losing the case on a "miscalculation" of statue of limitations was because they had no case and were too embarrassed to admit it. If there were justice here, charges would be brought against whoever in the university demanded this malicious false prosecution.
- clamprecht 9y ago
  A case of "no skin in the game." Neither the prosecutor nor the snitch had anything to lose.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Fortunately academia is populated by self-less souls searching for absolute truths only. I always wonder why the jealousy is so strong in those circles, it's not as if there is much at stake other than reputation and ego. I've seen quite a few examples of this in real life by now and it's much worse than industry in some ways.
  - ianai 9y ago
    Ego/jealously know no bounds. Society should really try to get a handle on it as a 'group effort'.
  - tacon 9y ago
    "Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." [1] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    The lower the stakes, the more vicious the infighting.
  - koolba 9y ago
    People will do disgustingly stupid things to chase meaningless internet points. It's understandable that more real world intangibles like reputation would see similar actions.
x0x0 9y ago
Two suggestions on why this happened (from [1]) Georgia Tech auditors accused Dr. Laskar of stealing as much as $1.5 million to benefit Sayana. In the end, the faculty committee determined that Georgia Tech had paid for $50,000 worth of chips in 2007 that were sent to a Korean chip research institute to satisfy a contractual obligation that Sayana had with it. Dr. Laskar argues that any chips paid for by Georgia Tech and sent to the Korean institute originally served academic purposes. He added that the Koreans did not keep the chips, returning them to Georgia Tech after its engineers verified that they worked. Dr. Laskar said that this was a common practice with other companies at the chip design center and that Sayana had the rights to do it because of its licensing deal with Georgia Tech. The accusations followed an episode at Georgia Tech two years earlier. The university had been caught up in a scandal that received wide publicity in Georgia, in which employees were charged with making personal purchases on Georgia Tech credit cards, known as procurement cards. And note that other professors agree "Laskar 'pushed the edges' of what seemed ethical". Second, With Sayana, Dr. Laskar said he didn’t take the informal path that faculty start-ups at Georgia Tech are encouraged to follow. While he accepted money from a start-up incubator financed by Georgia Tech, he declined later rounds of funding because it would have involved giving up equity in Sayana, allowing the university to install board members and professional managers of their choosing. “I’m sure that torqued people,” Dr. Laskar said. The article [1] quotes some university employee saying that this hasn't affected university spin-outs which seems laughable. If Georgia Tech was willing to pursue a rainmaker like this, well, Stanford et al will be happy to have them. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/technology/reaching-for-silicon-valley.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/technology/reaching-for-si...
- jacquesm 9y ago
  It's funny how the first round of funding apparently more or less requires you to accept the second otherwise you're 'unethical'. That's just plainly wrong. Either you get to decide round-by-round what the best option for you and your company is or it should simply be one round. To give a bit of seed capital, wait to see what flies (and thus is very much de-risked) and then to force an additional round requiring dilution and board members that may simply be luggage to haul around should be up to the present day shareholders. The University is playing a dirty game here. A friend of mine was in a similar situation, first round of funding was peanuts, second round - after substantial input in time, funds and efforts of the founders - on much less good terms (and effectively still peanuts) including board members and so on.
revelation 9y ago
A state prosecutor missing the statute of limitations seems like a crass professional misstep that should see them sanctioned.
a3n 9y ago
> “This wouldn’t have happened at M.I.T. or Carnegie Mellon,” said Dr. Ricketts, "... they would basically have handled it internally." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz "On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by MIT police on state breaking-and-entering charges, ... download academic journal articles systematically from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him by MIT." It was handled and concluded in a very un-internal way.
- URSpider94 9y ago
  Totally different situation.
  - wfo 9y ago
    Yes, because Aaron was not faculty.
x0x0 9y ago
Are you being deliberately obtuse? Dude stole $50k then turned down a follow-on investment, giving Georgia Tech a valid cause and motive to pursue his criminal behavior.
- mehwoot 9y ago
  How exactly did he steal 50k? It says georgia tech paid 50k for some chips which where sent to korea for verification, and then back to georgia tech, which the professor said is allowed by tje licensing deal. And which was not shown in any way in court to be "stealing".
  - x0x0 9y ago
    He used Georgia Tech money to pay for a chip run for his private corp Sayana. The professor claims this is allowed by the licensing deal. The judge, prosecutor, Georgia Tech, his peer professors, and professor friends at other universities all believe this to be theft of Georgia Tech funds.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- jacquesm 9y ago
  I'll give you this to think about: If you stole $50K from some institution do you honestly believe they would then offer you a follow on investment? And then if you turn that 'offer' down that that would give valid cause and motive to pursue for criminal behavior? That makes absolutely no sense at all. If you steal from me I don't need further motive to pursue so the whole 'follow on investment' thing is utterly pointless. And I would never demand to do a follow on investment in a company that I'm alleging stole from me. That's ridiculous. So either he stole and they should have pursued it there and then or they should have dropped the matter. But to only pursue after he turned them down makes this look like a business deal gone sour and the whole criminal thing just being tacked on as some kind of revenge. I've had a similar thing happen to me once. A guy - who will remain nameless but he was a German businessman - bought himself in for a small amount in a company I had founded, then when he offered to buy another stake we refused. The next thing we knew we were going to be sued for all kinds of infractions, just a way to up the pressure from his position as a shareholder. This story here has way too many parallels with that story to just believe GT outright. And in that other story I happen to know exactly what happened. So, either you're going to have to do a lot better to answer those two questions I asked at the top of this comment or you're going to have to admit that it really doesn't make any sense. To me it simply sounds like GT wanted a larger piece of the action and when they were told to walk they came up with this theft story to up the pressure.
x0x0 9y ago
He was. Try reading the article. He got off on statute of limitations.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  No, he was never convicted. If you would please read the bloody title it says 'Dismissed Racketeering Case'. No case, no conviction. A direct citation from the article linked: "Last October, a judge tossed out the state’s case before a trial"
  - x0x0 9y ago
    If you would read the judge's writing you'd notice he got off on a technicality: statute of limitations. No-one not named Laskar disputes he took that money. And he was, exactly as I said up post, charged with theft of the $50k. eg: http://joylaskarstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Laskar.-Order-for-dismissal.pdf http://joylaskarstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Laskar....
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      I read that and my comment stands. Whether you get off on the statute of limitations or not does not matter, what matters is that there is no conviction, so you're simply wrong but for some reason you can't seem to move past that bit. The rest of the case was not decided on its merits so you can't make statements like the ones you made and not everybody that is charged with something is guilty of it. You will notice the very careful wording of that document including bits such as 'alleged', 'purportedly' and 'can'. In other words, had the case gone forward there is always a chance that there would be a conviction, but since it did not we will simply never know. But the judge leaves ample room for a case that would have been decided in the defendants favor on other grounds than the one chosen, which is that they simply waited too long. And now it is up to you to decide why they waited that long. Also, you keep claiming that he stole $50k, but the judge - rightly, in my opinion - writes that that's not what he did. Let me cite the article you linked: "The question before the Court is what constituted the alleged thefts: the taking of the chips or the taking of Georgia Tech's money? Defendant's technology was built from from microchips, not bank notes. What he purportedly stole from Georgia Tech was the microchips he (through Georgia Tech) ordered from CMP. Those chips rightfully belonged to Georgia Tech because Georgia Tech ultimately, paid for them. However, the University's payment for the merchandise is a collateral consequence of the Defendant's alleged theft, and a measure of the value of the goods Defendant allegedly stole. The Payment is not, however the 'theft' that allegedly occurred in this case." In laymans terms that reads: The court decides that the theft if there was one was the chips, not the money and that the date when that happened is now so far in the past that the case is dead crucially, without deciding whether or not a theft actually took place. Since this whole case seems to have started with jealousy and people smearing the defendant it is particularly ugly that you continue to write blatant un-truths.
infocollector 9y ago
Does anyone have a pointer to the details of this case that can be read?
georgeburdell 9y ago
Glad to see this finally got dismissed. I was a Ph.D student in the department when this happened and it caused a lot of discontent among the faculty. Perhaps related, GT's royalty agreement is quite a bit less generous than other schools known for their entrepreneurship, such as Stanford and MIT. This and issues like Prof. Laskar's have had a negative impact on the rate at which companies are started at the school.
- Zhenya 9y ago
  Paging George Burdell
laurentoget 9y ago
Regardless of his guilt or innocence, the way this was investigated, prosecuted and litigated by the state would not make me feel comfortable investing in Georgia. This is a pretty sad story for Atlanta and its ambition of becoming a center of technological innovation.

160 points by mtg 9y ago

kt9 9y ago

> He started chip companies on the side, which Georgia Tech encouraged, eager to see successful university spinoffs that had showered riches and prestige on Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other top computer engineering schools. And now there will be no more academics at Georgia Tech working to spinoff companies that shower riches on their benefactor universities. The bureaucracy strikes again and kills innovation.

Spooky23 9y ago
That's probably necessary in public universities. In my region, there are two institutions with leadership that let power and influence in these areas get to their heads. First, there's private RPI, where the president is basically looting the school for a decade, but the board does nothing. Then look at the sad tale of SUNY Poly, where its president did some pretty amazing things along with some... other things that would have been survivable in a private environment but a death sentence in the public sector. Unless you're a political person with the ability to stay at "arms length" with campaign funds and PACs, you cannot work for government entities and be safely involved with any significant business activity that is potentially related to your public employment. Even if you're able to do so, any misstep, greedy mistake, illegal act, or other screw up will be exponentially more dangerous. Linkage: RPI: https://news.vice.com/article/americas-highest-paid-college-president-is-dragging-her-school-into-crippling-debt https://news.vice.com/article/americas-highest-paid-college-... SUNY Poly: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/nyregion/physicist-in-albany-corruption-case-was-a-geek-with-big-goals.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/nyregion/physicist-in-...
- azernik 9y ago
  UC Berkeley seems to handle this process just fine.
  - castellar 9y ago
    Could you or someone possibly elaborate on this? Why does UC Berkeley have so much better luck with startups and spin-off companies/technologies when compared to other public institutions?
    - azernik 9y ago
      It has an institutional culture (in the bureaucracy) of nurturing those startups. In particular, it has a very clear and permissive procedure for transferring work to private companies (see [1], under Outgoing MTA). You tell the university what materials (including IP) you want to use in your company, and the university negotiates a direct quid pro quo. The Georgia Tech process, by contrast, seems totally ad hoc and amateur. "You can take stuff for free up to a point, as long as you agree to certain investment agreements with the university, and if you step over one of our unclear lines we will slap you down." [1] http://ipira.berkeley.edu/material-transfer-agreements http://ipira.berkeley.edu/material-transfer-agreements
- eastWestMath 9y ago
  Also, professors do steal money. There's all sorts of guidelines at my university now about how grant money can be used because a prof in the medical school used a grant for cancer research to renovate his kitchen (more or less).

lastofus 9y ago

> Last October, a judge tossed out the state’s case before a trial, ruling that the five-year statute of limitations had expired on the misdeeds that it had accused Dr. Laskar of committing. The way it ended didn't help. It would have been better if it were thrown out because it was obviously BS, or if it went to trial and he were exonerated.

fake-name 9y ago

> He had previously remained silent to avoid antagonizing prosecutors, who still hold family items with sentimental value, like a laptop with the only copies of childhood photographs of Dr. Laskar’s three daughters and an unfinished novel by his wife. Like, what the fuck? Why do prosecutors have such broad control over something that should be held by a independent party? The justice system is so fucked.

emiliobumachar 9y ago
There should be a right to copies of one's seized electronics' contents if not returned in a reasonable period. Also, what is the justification for keeping them after the case was dismissed?
salesguy222 9y ago
It certainly is. Many decades of misplaced public morality and "desire for justice" has turned the justice system into an apparatus that is entirely overreaching yet still tremendously powerful. Public support for it is still there from those who use the internet a bit less and those who don't see grave injustices as anything but "i'm sorry that happened" or "they probably deserved it" I don't mean to be fatalist but there really is no fixing this in the short or mid term; and in the long term, you would need some really mystical power to change the culture and practices technology has exposed to us all how bad the justice system is, but technology has also made the justice system even more egregiously corrupt and powerful
syshum 9y ago
>>>The justice system is so fucked. That is because we do not have a justice system. We have a Legal System The rules, the process, the procedure are what is important in our system. Any Justice obtained is secondary to the legal process and legal procedures

rl3 9y ago

>For one thing, a state grand jury didn’t indict him on racketeering charges until late December 2014, more than four and a half years after the raids on Dr. Laskar’s home and office in May 2010. The delay in indictment aside, it appears they've been holding his personal devices hostage for nearly seven years now. >He had previously remained silent to avoid antagonizing prosecutors, who still hold family items with sentimental value, like a laptop with the only copies of childhood photographs of Dr. Laskar’s three daughters and an unfinished novel by his wife. Theoretically, not speaking up offers the prosecutors more incentive to retain possession, especially if they know that's the reason for the silence. Device seizure without prompt imaging and return of the hardware is bullshit in all but the most grievous cases (e.g. terrorism). While many people who have been through extended litigation or criminal proceedings just want it to end, it seems like this guy was railroaded pretty hard. Does he have cause to sue the state, university, or both?

dllthomas 9y ago
> Device seizure without prompt imaging and return of the hardware is bullshit in all but the most grievous cases (e.g. terrorism). I don't think grievousness alone should be enough. Refusal to return the devices should also be predicated on some sort of substantiated belief that returning the devices would lead to some sort of harm. Possibly the case in your terrorism example; clearly not, here.

srtjstjsj 9y ago

The original story explains how this was likely a jealous colleague at GT, who called in the state guns to get revenge. The prosecutor's extreme delay and then "accidentally" losing the case on a "miscalculation" of statue of limitations was because they had no case and were too embarrassed to admit it. If there were justice here, charges would be brought against whoever in the university demanded this malicious false prosecution.

clamprecht 9y ago
A case of "no skin in the game." Neither the prosecutor nor the snitch had anything to lose.
jacquesm 9y ago
Fortunately academia is populated by self-less souls searching for absolute truths only. I always wonder why the jealousy is so strong in those circles, it's not as if there is much at stake other than reputation and ego. I've seen quite a few examples of this in real life by now and it's much worse than industry in some ways.
- ianai 9y ago
  Ego/jealously know no bounds. Society should really try to get a handle on it as a 'group effort'.
- tacon 9y ago
  "Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." [1] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/
- Spooky23 9y ago
  The lower the stakes, the more vicious the infighting.
- koolba 9y ago
  People will do disgustingly stupid things to chase meaningless internet points. It's understandable that more real world intangibles like reputation would see similar actions.

x0x0 9y ago

Two suggestions on why this happened (from [1]) Georgia Tech auditors accused Dr. Laskar of stealing as much as $1.5 million to benefit Sayana. In the end, the faculty committee determined that Georgia Tech had paid for $50,000 worth of chips in 2007 that were sent to a Korean chip research institute to satisfy a contractual obligation that Sayana had with it. Dr. Laskar argues that any chips paid for by Georgia Tech and sent to the Korean institute originally served academic purposes. He added that the Koreans did not keep the chips, returning them to Georgia Tech after its engineers verified that they worked. Dr. Laskar said that this was a common practice with other companies at the chip design center and that Sayana had the rights to do it because of its licensing deal with Georgia Tech. The accusations followed an episode at Georgia Tech two years earlier. The university had been caught up in a scandal that received wide publicity in Georgia, in which employees were charged with making personal purchases on Georgia Tech credit cards, known as procurement cards. And note that other professors agree "Laskar 'pushed the edges' of what seemed ethical". Second, With Sayana, Dr. Laskar said he didn’t take the informal path that faculty start-ups at Georgia Tech are encouraged to follow. While he accepted money from a start-up incubator financed by Georgia Tech, he declined later rounds of funding because it would have involved giving up equity in Sayana, allowing the university to install board members and professional managers of their choosing. “I’m sure that torqued people,” Dr. Laskar said. The article [1] quotes some university employee saying that this hasn't affected university spin-outs which seems laughable. If Georgia Tech was willing to pursue a rainmaker like this, well, Stanford et al will be happy to have them. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/technology/reaching-for-silicon-valley.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/technology/reaching-for-si...

jacquesm 9y ago
It's funny how the first round of funding apparently more or less requires you to accept the second otherwise you're 'unethical'. That's just plainly wrong. Either you get to decide round-by-round what the best option for you and your company is or it should simply be one round. To give a bit of seed capital, wait to see what flies (and thus is very much de-risked) and then to force an additional round requiring dilution and board members that may simply be luggage to haul around should be up to the present day shareholders. The University is playing a dirty game here. A friend of mine was in a similar situation, first round of funding was peanuts, second round - after substantial input in time, funds and efforts of the founders - on much less good terms (and effectively still peanuts) including board members and so on.

revelation 9y ago

A state prosecutor missing the statute of limitations seems like a crass professional misstep that should see them sanctioned.

a3n 9y ago

> “This wouldn’t have happened at M.I.T. or Carnegie Mellon,” said Dr. Ricketts, "... they would basically have handled it internally." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz "On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by MIT police on state breaking-and-entering charges, ... download academic journal articles systematically from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him by MIT." It was handled and concluded in a very un-internal way.

URSpider94 9y ago
Totally different situation.
- wfo 9y ago
  Yes, because Aaron was not faculty.

x0x0 9y ago

Are you being deliberately obtuse? Dude stole $50k then turned down a follow-on investment, giving Georgia Tech a valid cause and motive to pursue his criminal behavior.

mehwoot 9y ago
How exactly did he steal 50k? It says georgia tech paid 50k for some chips which where sent to korea for verification, and then back to georgia tech, which the professor said is allowed by tje licensing deal. And which was not shown in any way in court to be "stealing".
- x0x0 9y ago
  He used Georgia Tech money to pay for a chip run for his private corp Sayana. The professor claims this is allowed by the licensing deal. The judge, prosecutor, Georgia Tech, his peer professors, and professor friends at other universities all believe this to be theft of Georgia Tech funds.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
jacquesm 9y ago
I'll give you this to think about: If you stole $50K from some institution do you honestly believe they would then offer you a follow on investment? And then if you turn that 'offer' down that that would give valid cause and motive to pursue for criminal behavior? That makes absolutely no sense at all. If you steal from me I don't need further motive to pursue so the whole 'follow on investment' thing is utterly pointless. And I would never demand to do a follow on investment in a company that I'm alleging stole from me. That's ridiculous. So either he stole and they should have pursued it there and then or they should have dropped the matter. But to only pursue after he turned them down makes this look like a business deal gone sour and the whole criminal thing just being tacked on as some kind of revenge. I've had a similar thing happen to me once. A guy - who will remain nameless but he was a German businessman - bought himself in for a small amount in a company I had founded, then when he offered to buy another stake we refused. The next thing we knew we were going to be sued for all kinds of infractions, just a way to up the pressure from his position as a shareholder. This story here has way too many parallels with that story to just believe GT outright. And in that other story I happen to know exactly what happened. So, either you're going to have to do a lot better to answer those two questions I asked at the top of this comment or you're going to have to admit that it really doesn't make any sense. To me it simply sounds like GT wanted a larger piece of the action and when they were told to walk they came up with this theft story to up the pressure.

x0x0 9y ago

He was. Try reading the article. He got off on statute of limitations.

jacquesm 9y ago
No, he was never convicted. If you would please read the bloody title it says 'Dismissed Racketeering Case'. No case, no conviction. A direct citation from the article linked: "Last October, a judge tossed out the state’s case before a trial"
- x0x0 9y ago
  If you would read the judge's writing you'd notice he got off on a technicality: statute of limitations. No-one not named Laskar disputes he took that money. And he was, exactly as I said up post, charged with theft of the $50k. eg: http://joylaskarstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Laskar.-Order-for-dismissal.pdf http://joylaskarstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Laskar....
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    I read that and my comment stands. Whether you get off on the statute of limitations or not does not matter, what matters is that there is no conviction, so you're simply wrong but for some reason you can't seem to move past that bit. The rest of the case was not decided on its merits so you can't make statements like the ones you made and not everybody that is charged with something is guilty of it. You will notice the very careful wording of that document including bits such as 'alleged', 'purportedly' and 'can'. In other words, had the case gone forward there is always a chance that there would be a conviction, but since it did not we will simply never know. But the judge leaves ample room for a case that would have been decided in the defendants favor on other grounds than the one chosen, which is that they simply waited too long. And now it is up to you to decide why they waited that long. Also, you keep claiming that he stole $50k, but the judge - rightly, in my opinion - writes that that's not what he did. Let me cite the article you linked: "The question before the Court is what constituted the alleged thefts: the taking of the chips or the taking of Georgia Tech's money? Defendant's technology was built from from microchips, not bank notes. What he purportedly stole from Georgia Tech was the microchips he (through Georgia Tech) ordered from CMP. Those chips rightfully belonged to Georgia Tech because Georgia Tech ultimately, paid for them. However, the University's payment for the merchandise is a collateral consequence of the Defendant's alleged theft, and a measure of the value of the goods Defendant allegedly stole. The Payment is not, however the 'theft' that allegedly occurred in this case." In laymans terms that reads: The court decides that the theft if there was one was the chips, not the money and that the date when that happened is now so far in the past that the case is dead crucially, without deciding whether or not a theft actually took place. Since this whole case seems to have started with jealousy and people smearing the defendant it is particularly ugly that you continue to write blatant un-truths.

infocollector 9y ago

Does anyone have a pointer to the details of this case that can be read?

georgeburdell 9y ago

Glad to see this finally got dismissed. I was a Ph.D student in the department when this happened and it caused a lot of discontent among the faculty. Perhaps related, GT's royalty agreement is quite a bit less generous than other schools known for their entrepreneurship, such as Stanford and MIT. This and issues like Prof. Laskar's have had a negative impact on the rate at which companies are started at the school.

Zhenya 9y ago
Paging George Burdell

laurentoget 9y ago

Regardless of his guilt or innocence, the way this was investigated, prosecuted and litigated by the state would not make me feel comfortable investing in Georgia. This is a pretty sad story for Atlanta and its ambition of becoming a center of technological innovation.