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One common thread to frauds like these: often the first person the conman cons is himself. It’s all too often that some ambitious tech entrepreneur embarks on

One common thread to frauds like these: often the first person the conman cons is himself. It’s all too often that some ambitious tech entrepreneur embarks on their journey, but as the road gets rough they begin making ethical compromises. Every one of them is justified in their minds by “the mission,” and that all will be made whole in the end when the Big Product finally changes the world. Then one day, police are slapping on cuffs, and they cannot figure out where it all went so wrong. I say all this with empathy for them. Driven people often have that extreme tunnel vision, and it has the potential to cost them everything. Sayers deserves to be prosecuted and likely punished, but it may be a while before he even understands that he did anything wrong. Alternate possibility, Sayers is fundamentally crooked and I’m hopelessly naive.

foldr 5y ago
> Instead of using the funds he raised to create the promised smartphone, he paid personal expenses and debts Sounds pretty crooked to me. Why are we so willing to give wealthy people (or those who appear to be wealthy) the benefit of the doubt? We don’t usually weave these sympathetic narratives for criminals from other segments of society. Of course I have no idea if the article is accurate - I’m just going by what it claims that he did.
NationalPark 5y ago
Yeah that’s definitely how people who commit fraud like to be described. Doesn’t mean they aren’t scumbag fraudsters who knew exactly what they were doing.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I generally agree, but in this case the fraud extended well over a decade and it’s hard to even find any suggestion that they were trying to be a real company. They raised money. They rented a huge office space. They got booths at trade shows and worked hard on PR. But the one thing they didn’t apparently do is try to build and ship a phone. Maybe he thought he could simply collect enough money to pay a contract manufacturer to do it all for him, but after a decade without progress and countless lies perpetrated to investors and then media, I don’t think he secretly thought he was doing the right thing.
- lcall 5y ago
  I don't know at all about the CEO and whether he committed fraud. But I believe at least the CTO worked hard to build and ship a phone. We were coworkers for a while as he worked on the Saygus project (he's very capable and personable), and he brought in a prototype phone at least once, showing us its features and obviously he cared and had worked on it. I remember him expressing which features were really important to him, him demoing some cool-for-the-time video conferencing software he had written that ran on it, and later on at least once, expressing his frustration that the phone had hardware issues (manufacturing flaws I think), and the Chinese manufacturer they were working with had refused to make another prototype with them fixed, until they had more money or a guaranteed contract for a large production run (or something like that). I think he was working at it for a long time. Edit: It seems very possible that the CEO met someone with good ideas and very strong abilities, may have had some positive intentions, but spent too much too soon or got overexcited about the $ or just not enough nose-to-grindstone at the business execution level, and/or that successfully launching a phone to manufacturing is extremely hard & expensive. But again I'm not in a position to know more.

foldr 5y ago

> Instead of using the funds he raised to create the promised smartphone, he paid personal expenses and debts Sounds pretty crooked to me. Why are we so willing to give wealthy people (or those who appear to be wealthy) the benefit of the doubt? We don’t usually weave these sympathetic narratives for criminals from other segments of society. Of course I have no idea if the article is accurate - I’m just going by what it claims that he did.

NationalPark 5y ago

Yeah that’s definitely how people who commit fraud like to be described. Doesn’t mean they aren’t scumbag fraudsters who knew exactly what they were doing.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

I generally agree, but in this case the fraud extended well over a decade and it’s hard to even find any suggestion that they were trying to be a real company. They raised money. They rented a huge office space. They got booths at trade shows and worked hard on PR. But the one thing they didn’t apparently do is try to build and ship a phone. Maybe he thought he could simply collect enough money to pay a contract manufacturer to do it all for him, but after a decade without progress and countless lies perpetrated to investors and then media, I don’t think he secretly thought he was doing the right thing.

lcall 5y ago
I don't know at all about the CEO and whether he committed fraud. But I believe at least the CTO worked hard to build and ship a phone. We were coworkers for a while as he worked on the Saygus project (he's very capable and personable), and he brought in a prototype phone at least once, showing us its features and obviously he cared and had worked on it. I remember him expressing which features were really important to him, him demoing some cool-for-the-time video conferencing software he had written that ran on it, and later on at least once, expressing his frustration that the phone had hardware issues (manufacturing flaws I think), and the Chinese manufacturer they were working with had refused to make another prototype with them fixed, until they had more money or a guaranteed contract for a large production run (or something like that). I think he was working at it for a long time. Edit: It seems very possible that the CEO met someone with good ideas and very strong abilities, may have had some positive intentions, but spent too much too soon or got overexcited about the $ or just not enough nose-to-grindstone at the business execution level, and/or that successfully launching a phone to manufacturing is extremely hard & expensive. But again I'm not in a position to know more.