The proPublica article says that paypal raised half a million dollars less than a month after he sold himself the shares. It raised millions more that year. Pet

The proPublica article says that paypal raised half a million dollars less than a month after he sold himself the shares. It raised millions more that year. Peter absolutely had been given a valuation by the venture capital firms when he sold himself the shares, deals like that don't suddenly materialize in less than a month. We can get into semantics about if paypal was actually worth what the firms were about to pay, but I think it's pretty clear that Peter committed fraud by selling himself shares for far less than he knew them to be worth. This isn't a "I feel like these are worth a lot" scenario. This is a "we'll give you half a million dollars in a couple weeks" scenario and then Peter undercut that valuation.