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Oh I remember this. Good. I hope it costs him. Honest question though: > As part of his guilty plea, Choi admitted that while attempting to recruit potential
by fwdpropaganda 9y ago
Oh I remember this. Good. I hope it costs him.
Honest question though:
> As part of his guilty plea, Choi admitted that while attempting to recruit potential employees, he made false and misleading statements about various topics, including his educational and professional history, and the amount of his wealth. Choi admitted in his plea that, in truth, he never attended any business school, that he was never employed in any capacity by any financial institution, and that he exaggerated his wealth.
Is "making misleading statements about various topics" a crime? If you tell your employees that you went to whatever business school, or your net worth is whatever etc etc... is that a crime?
- thirtyseven 9y agoMisrepresenting yourself in a business transaction for your own benefit is called fraud.
- mbesto 9y agoYour own personal benefit or the company's benefit? Because if the latter, I have a queue of tech start-ups ready to be prosecuted.
- taneq 9y agoBoth. As for your tech start-ups, are they making grandiose claims for where they want to be in 5 years' time? Or misrepresenting what they currently have? If the latter then they absolutely could be prosecuted.
- brianwawok 9y agoIf you are broke but borrow a BMW from a friend to go to an important client meeting fraud? You misrepresented yourself. Maybe shady. Not sure if it is illegal. Clearly there has to be more to it than that?
- DonHopkins 9y agoIf you photoshop the name of the client onto the title of the BMW, tell the client you're giving them the BMW in exchange for working for you, but then don't give them the BMW.
- dragonwriter 9y agoDriving a BMW is not a representation of fact beyond maybe “I have permission to drive this BMW”, and would thus not be a misrepresentation of fact, material or otherwise.
- yueq 9y agoIf they ever used misleading statements to bind a legal contract including employment, yes it is a crime.
- goodJobWalrus 9y agoProbably not. If it was, for example, that Yahoo CEO, pre-Mayer, who also faked his credentials would have been arrested.
- dragonwriter 9y agoNot every crime, even those that are known to prosecutors, is deemed worthy of prosecution.
- goodJobWalrus 9y agoEh, I guess. Seems quite common even among high profile people though. I also remember a dean from the MIT being caught for the same thing, after something like 20 years. She too just resigned, and that was that.
- anxman 9y agoIn this case, it reflects fraud. On top of the wire fraud that he committed by emailing a false financial statement.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Is "making misleading statements about various topics" a crime? On its own, no. OTOH, making material false statements to people with the intent of getting them to give you something of value is the core of the offense of fraud, which is both a crime and a tort.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoExactly this, and he took money from some of his employees under fraudulent terms according to the referenced Medium story.
- rayiner 9y agoThe lede is the juicer story, but I suspect (having not read the indictment), that the basis for the wire fraud charge is: > He further admitted that in August 2016, while at WrkRiot’s office in Santa Clara, he emailed several of his employees fake wire transfer confirmation documents purporting to reflect their salary payments for the purpose of convincing his employees to continue working for his privately failing company.
- minimaxir 9y agoThe evidence of wire fraud is very obvious in the original blog post: https://medium.com/startup-grind/i-got-scammed-by-a-silicon-valley-startup-574ced8acdff https://medium.com/startup-grind/i-got-scammed-by-a-silicon-...