7 ms·

I hate Holmes as much as anyone [0], but life in prison (65 years when you're 37 = out when you're 102) sounds unreasonably harsh. She's not convicted of actua

by bambax 5y ago

I hate Holmes as much as anyone [0], but life in prison (65 years when you're 37 = out when you're 102) sounds unreasonably harsh. She's not convicted of actually, physically harming anyone, esp. patients (which doesn't mean she didn't -- but she wasn't found guilty of that); she's convicted of lying to investors. That's obviously bad, and should carry some form of punishment. Maybe 5 years? But life?? That's insane. [0] I read John Carreyrou's book when it came out.

Hnrobert42 5y ago
5 years?! People can get that much for stealing a car or jewelry. She stole tens of millions! Not only that, she did it through fraud. It’s not like you can just build a higher fence. For the system to work, it must be free of fraud.
- bambax 5y ago
  Fraud is different from theft. Fraud is manipulating consent. Theft is taking by force what isn't yours. I don't know why everyone seems to be conflating the two everywhere in this thread.
  - Hnrobert42 5y ago
    I did not conflate them. I directly compared them. In both theft and fraud, the victim is deprived of of something. That’s why people consider them similar crimes.
    - bambax 5y ago
      The question is not just the state of the victim, it is (mainly) the intent of the perpetrator and the means used. That's why you don't get the same sentence if you harm somebody by accident or if you meant to do it.
    - blitzar 5y ago
      Accidental death and murder both result in someone dead. They are not similar crimes.
      - ryathal 5y ago
        Accidental fraud generally isn't even a crime though...
      - dahfizz 5y ago
        They are not the _same_, but they are extremely similar. Do you think first and second degree murder charges are "similar"?
      - 369548684892826 5y ago
        Feel pretty similar from the victim’s point of view.
        kube-system 5y ago
        The sentiment that sentencing is justified by retribution is the number one reason why the US criminal justice system is messed up. The concept of right-and-wrong and mens rea are inextricably one.
    - Jimmc414 5y ago
      How would you exclude rear ending a car at a red light from that set?
      - ryathal 5y ago
        Intent. Both fraud and theft require intent, rear ending a car can happen regardless of intent, and would be a much more severe charge if there was intent.
  - marcusverus 5y ago
    In this case, fraud is far worse than theft. She defrauded investors of hundreds of millions of dollars and spent them on a what was essentially a vanity project. She destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars of private property. Destroying 100 million is best compared to something like a "killdozer"[0] rampage. Holmes' crime was the destructive equivalent of leveling ~300 homes. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#The_'Killdozer' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#The_'Killdozer...
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      Speaking of killdozer, there is an excellent podcast on this guy: https://swindledpodcast.com/podcasts/season-5/72-the-killdozer/ https://swindledpodcast.com/podcasts/season-5/72-the-killdoz... It was very lucky nobody was seriously injured by that thing.
  - bufferoverflow 5y ago
    No, you're confusing robbery and theft. Robbery is taking stuff by force.
- whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  Sometimes it's not all just about the monetary amount. Someone choosing to use the threat of violence or death on a single individual one time to even take as little as $20 doesn't belong in a society. Even if you're lying to trick some companies and investors to give you millions you're still not as evil or dangerous to society as the person who chooses to terrorize individuals for their gain. The actions are what matters.
  - richthegeek 5y ago
    “Do you understand what I'm saying?" shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!" "Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm. "What?" snapped Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?" "I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly. "I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!" "No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.” - Going Postal, Terry Prachett Fraud is not a zero-victim crime and less than petty theft is. Just because the investors can 'afford' it, their losses are passed on to society eventually.
    - neuronic 5y ago
      She's ruined anyway, doesn't mean she should get life in prison but I know Americans tend to thrive on cruelty.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        The reverse, that you are in effect advocating, amounts to letting the big fish get away with fleecing LOTS of people while coming down much harder on the small fry that robs one person at a time. Also a very American way of thinking AFAICS.
- sgt101 5y ago
  I think that there are two components in your argument, the personal harm element and social policing. The question for me is what responsibility and therefore forefit there should be on an individual for the social element. Interestingly it seems to me that the more libertarian folks are the harsher their view of punitive measures for social enforcement seems.
- klik99 5y ago
  Just on your last sentence: The ideal amount of fraud is not zero, the cost of checking everything is too high. I recommend the book “lying for money” which breaks down what fraud is and what that tells us about the overall system
- parineum 5y ago
  > Grand Theft > Grand theft includes theft of property with a value of more than $950 or theft of a firearm (any value). The penalty for stealing a firearm is a felony, punishable by a state prison term of 16 months, two years, or three years. In all other cases, grand theft is a wobbler and can be charged as a misdemeanor or felony. A misdemeanor sentence results in up to one year in jail and a felony sentence results in prison time of 16 months, two years, or three years. (Cal. Penal Code §§ 487, 490.2 (2020).) You actually can't get that much time for stealing a car or jewelry. What gives a criminal that much time is that "theft" is often actually "robbery", which involves the use of coercive violence. Violence is generally punished much more harshly. > California Penal Code 211 PC defines the crime of robbery as “the felonious taking of personal property in the possession of another, from his person or immediate presence, and against his will, accomplished by means of force or fear.” Robbery is a felony punishable by up to 9 years in state prison. > First-degree robbery includes robbery of > any driver or passenger on a bus, taxi, streetcar, subway, cable car, etc., any person in an inhabited structure, or any person who has just used an ATM and is still in the vicinity of the ATM.4 > First-degree robbery leads to a California state prison sentence of between three (3) and nine (9) years.5
  - Hnrobert42 5y ago
    While you may be correct, I am not sure your pedantry affects my point.
    - parineum 5y ago
      It's not pedantry. Those people who got "much more time" aren't there for taking money, they're there for pointing guns and knives at people. Threatening to take someone's life is much worse than actually taking some money.
Hendrikto 5y ago
> She's not convicted of actually, physically harming anyone She should be though. People had unnecessary and invasive medical treatment as a direct result pf her fraud.
- kube-system 5y ago
  The jury acquitted her of 4 counts regarding defrauding patients. She may have caused them civil harm, but that’s a different case than what was being considered here.
- HlessClaudesman 5y ago
  Or they didn't receive timely treatment because of her fraud. The actus reus is her fraud, the original criminal act, and having decided to do crimes she is also responsible for any harm caused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus In the US is it up to the harmed individuals or their surviving relatives to peruse this?
atlantic 5y ago
Your argument is applicable to all white-collar crime. And it's emotionally-based, because she looks like one of us, not like a stereotypical thug. But in fact, she lied to take money from investors - theft on a grand scale - even if she wasn't wielding a sawn-off shotgun and wearing a ski mask. Edit: aside from that, I agree the potential sentence is very long, but that is characteristic of the US justice system, right across the board. In my country, the maximum sentence is 25 years, regardless of the crime.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  On the other side, one might make the argument that someone with millions of dollars to spare on early-stage investments should also be able to do their own due diligence on investments - otherwise, why would the status "accredited investor" be required? And, implicitly, that people like Holmes and Madoff who decide to exploit greed and unprofessionalism serve a vital purpose in a free market by acting as predators removing weak elements from the market. Experts have warned from the beginning that Theranos made unrealistic to impossible announcements. Anyone investing at that scale without consulting experts IMO does not deserve protection from the law. If Theranos is one thing, it is a real life example of why group dynamics and investing don't mix, and why the best thing to come out of r/wallstreetbets is the saying "do your own DD".
  - metabagel 5y ago
    For the most part, it wasn’t really possible to perform due diligence in this case, because Theranos refused to submit to an audit, and otherwise lied and actively prevented investors from getting the true story. For that reason, some potential investors walked away.
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    She straight up said she was backed by partnerships with big pharma and that the device was working. I would have invested in a heart beat given the claimm. Lying at that level is insane. She need removed from the presence of law abiding citizens as long as possible.
Boritanian 5y ago
She effectively stole millions. That's multiple lifetimes worth of work for a lot of people. If you assume average salary of 100k per year per person with 1/4th of time work per year. that's effectively 400k per year per person. He stole a hundred million which would be 250 years.
- flexie 5y ago
  If it matters how rich the investors she defrauded actually are, perhaps she should get just a few months in jail: "Notably, Theranos’ investors weren’t the usual-suspect venture capital firms. Rather, her funding came from individuals like former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Walton family, among other wealthy elites. Some evidence showed that these investors were willing to give Theranos money even when Holmes evaded their more probing questions." https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/03/elizabeth-holmes-verdict-guilty-theranos-fraud/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJg9hc3VLdcOf-lD7N8MunkFLKHuauxOEzQ2f17Mls2uNu8zLhr0XrwHfUZ0VxuZ49d8hT9gUw659k6qqyrVdCbf0aijcftsg7yNRAW52yDTJeXifgYQjp84Y9F6I06EwbgPAF1_YjwXMSDNKaxvq8BrY_oe_ecUA-H3qcQCn7ci https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/03/elizabeth-holmes-verdict-g...
  - JshWright 5y ago
    > her funding came from individuals like former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Walton family, among other wealthy elites. And there we have the crux of why she was prosecuted... You're much better off screwing average people, then it's just "capitalism".
  - rswail 5y ago
    That's why she's being prosecuted so heavily, she screwed with the wrong people.
- dagw 5y ago
  She effectively stole millions. From people who could easily afford to lose it and who should have known better. None of the people she defrauded have a materially worse quality of life than they did before. Her biggest crime was making rich people look stupid, and they REALLY don't like that.
morelisp 5y ago
As long as we send people to prison for 65 years, it should be people who did the kind of things she did.
patrec 5y ago
Personally, I find it desirable that people who commit massive fraud in the health care sector get punished severely (based on whatever charges they are actually convicted of), because chances are someone will actually be physically harmed even if that is hard to prove to a standard necessary for conviction (even if no actual harmful treatment resulted, which seems likely in this case, the misallocation of resources to the fraud means someone will likely be deprived of a treatment they would otherwise have received). So IMO 5 years would be insane -- Madoff got done for 10 years, and his fraud was much more benign (I suspect a very significant percentage of his victims knew the returns were to good to be true and that someone was being defrauded; they just didn't realize it was them).
TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
You don't understand. In our system of capitalism, fleecing investors under false pretenses is the gravest of sins. She must be punished accordingly, in order to make a legal statement to other potential capital thieves.
zzbzq 5y ago
The way I see the world today has convinced me Dante's Inferno had it right: treachery > fraud > violence

by bambax 5y ago

Hnrobert42 5y ago

5 years?! People can get that much for stealing a car or jewelry. She stole tens of millions! Not only that, she did it through fraud. It’s not like you can just build a higher fence. For the system to work, it must be free of fraud.

bambax 5y ago
Fraud is different from theft. Fraud is manipulating consent. Theft is taking by force what isn't yours. I don't know why everyone seems to be conflating the two everywhere in this thread.
- Hnrobert42 5y ago
  I did not conflate them. I directly compared them. In both theft and fraud, the victim is deprived of of something. That’s why people consider them similar crimes.
  - bambax 5y ago
    The question is not just the state of the victim, it is (mainly) the intent of the perpetrator and the means used. That's why you don't get the same sentence if you harm somebody by accident or if you meant to do it.
  - blitzar 5y ago
    Accidental death and murder both result in someone dead. They are not similar crimes.
    - ryathal 5y ago
      Accidental fraud generally isn't even a crime though...
    - dahfizz 5y ago
      They are not the _same_, but they are extremely similar. Do you think first and second degree murder charges are "similar"?
    - 369548684892826 5y ago
      Feel pretty similar from the victim’s point of view.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        The sentiment that sentencing is justified by retribution is the number one reason why the US criminal justice system is messed up. The concept of right-and-wrong and mens rea are inextricably one.
  - Jimmc414 5y ago
    How would you exclude rear ending a car at a red light from that set?
    - ryathal 5y ago
      Intent. Both fraud and theft require intent, rear ending a car can happen regardless of intent, and would be a much more severe charge if there was intent.
- marcusverus 5y ago
  In this case, fraud is far worse than theft. She defrauded investors of hundreds of millions of dollars and spent them on a what was essentially a vanity project. She destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars of private property. Destroying 100 million is best compared to something like a "killdozer"[0] rampage. Holmes' crime was the destructive equivalent of leveling ~300 homes. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#The_'Killdozer' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer#The_'Killdozer...
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    Speaking of killdozer, there is an excellent podcast on this guy: https://swindledpodcast.com/podcasts/season-5/72-the-killdozer/ https://swindledpodcast.com/podcasts/season-5/72-the-killdoz... It was very lucky nobody was seriously injured by that thing.
- bufferoverflow 5y ago
  No, you're confusing robbery and theft. Robbery is taking stuff by force.
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
Sometimes it's not all just about the monetary amount. Someone choosing to use the threat of violence or death on a single individual one time to even take as little as $20 doesn't belong in a society. Even if you're lying to trick some companies and investors to give you millions you're still not as evil or dangerous to society as the person who chooses to terrorize individuals for their gain. The actions are what matters.
- richthegeek 5y ago
  “Do you understand what I'm saying?" shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!" "Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm. "What?" snapped Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?" "I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly. "I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!" "No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.” - Going Postal, Terry Prachett Fraud is not a zero-victim crime and less than petty theft is. Just because the investors can 'afford' it, their losses are passed on to society eventually.
  - neuronic 5y ago
    She's ruined anyway, doesn't mean she should get life in prison but I know Americans tend to thrive on cruelty.
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      The reverse, that you are in effect advocating, amounts to letting the big fish get away with fleecing LOTS of people while coming down much harder on the small fry that robs one person at a time. Also a very American way of thinking AFAICS.
sgt101 5y ago
I think that there are two components in your argument, the personal harm element and social policing. The question for me is what responsibility and therefore forefit there should be on an individual for the social element. Interestingly it seems to me that the more libertarian folks are the harsher their view of punitive measures for social enforcement seems.
klik99 5y ago
Just on your last sentence: The ideal amount of fraud is not zero, the cost of checking everything is too high. I recommend the book “lying for money” which breaks down what fraud is and what that tells us about the overall system
parineum 5y ago
> Grand Theft > Grand theft includes theft of property with a value of more than $950 or theft of a firearm (any value). The penalty for stealing a firearm is a felony, punishable by a state prison term of 16 months, two years, or three years. In all other cases, grand theft is a wobbler and can be charged as a misdemeanor or felony. A misdemeanor sentence results in up to one year in jail and a felony sentence results in prison time of 16 months, two years, or three years. (Cal. Penal Code §§ 487, 490.2 (2020).) You actually can't get that much time for stealing a car or jewelry. What gives a criminal that much time is that "theft" is often actually "robbery", which involves the use of coercive violence. Violence is generally punished much more harshly. > California Penal Code 211 PC defines the crime of robbery as “the felonious taking of personal property in the possession of another, from his person or immediate presence, and against his will, accomplished by means of force or fear.” Robbery is a felony punishable by up to 9 years in state prison. > First-degree robbery includes robbery of > any driver or passenger on a bus, taxi, streetcar, subway, cable car, etc., any person in an inhabited structure, or any person who has just used an ATM and is still in the vicinity of the ATM.4 > First-degree robbery leads to a California state prison sentence of between three (3) and nine (9) years.5
- Hnrobert42 5y ago
  While you may be correct, I am not sure your pedantry affects my point.
  - parineum 5y ago
    It's not pedantry. Those people who got "much more time" aren't there for taking money, they're there for pointing guns and knives at people. Threatening to take someone's life is much worse than actually taking some money.

Hendrikto 5y ago

> She's not convicted of actually, physically harming anyone She should be though. People had unnecessary and invasive medical treatment as a direct result pf her fraud.

kube-system 5y ago
The jury acquitted her of 4 counts regarding defrauding patients. She may have caused them civil harm, but that’s a different case than what was being considered here.
HlessClaudesman 5y ago
Or they didn't receive timely treatment because of her fraud. The actus reus is her fraud, the original criminal act, and having decided to do crimes she is also responsible for any harm caused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_reus In the US is it up to the harmed individuals or their surviving relatives to peruse this?

atlantic 5y ago

Your argument is applicable to all white-collar crime. And it's emotionally-based, because she looks like one of us, not like a stereotypical thug. But in fact, she lied to take money from investors - theft on a grand scale - even if she wasn't wielding a sawn-off shotgun and wearing a ski mask. Edit: aside from that, I agree the potential sentence is very long, but that is characteristic of the US justice system, right across the board. In my country, the maximum sentence is 25 years, regardless of the crime.

mschuster91 5y ago
On the other side, one might make the argument that someone with millions of dollars to spare on early-stage investments should also be able to do their own due diligence on investments - otherwise, why would the status "accredited investor" be required? And, implicitly, that people like Holmes and Madoff who decide to exploit greed and unprofessionalism serve a vital purpose in a free market by acting as predators removing weak elements from the market. Experts have warned from the beginning that Theranos made unrealistic to impossible announcements. Anyone investing at that scale without consulting experts IMO does not deserve protection from the law. If Theranos is one thing, it is a real life example of why group dynamics and investing don't mix, and why the best thing to come out of r/wallstreetbets is the saying "do your own DD".
- metabagel 5y ago
  For the most part, it wasn’t really possible to perform due diligence in this case, because Theranos refused to submit to an audit, and otherwise lied and actively prevented investors from getting the true story. For that reason, some potential investors walked away.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  She straight up said she was backed by partnerships with big pharma and that the device was working. I would have invested in a heart beat given the claimm. Lying at that level is insane. She need removed from the presence of law abiding citizens as long as possible.

Boritanian 5y ago

She effectively stole millions. That's multiple lifetimes worth of work for a lot of people. If you assume average salary of 100k per year per person with 1/4th of time work per year. that's effectively 400k per year per person. He stole a hundred million which would be 250 years.

flexie 5y ago
If it matters how rich the investors she defrauded actually are, perhaps she should get just a few months in jail: "Notably, Theranos’ investors weren’t the usual-suspect venture capital firms. Rather, her funding came from individuals like former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Walton family, among other wealthy elites. Some evidence showed that these investors were willing to give Theranos money even when Holmes evaded their more probing questions." https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/03/elizabeth-holmes-verdict-guilty-theranos-fraud/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJg9hc3VLdcOf-lD7N8MunkFLKHuauxOEzQ2f17Mls2uNu8zLhr0XrwHfUZ0VxuZ49d8hT9gUw659k6qqyrVdCbf0aijcftsg7yNRAW52yDTJeXifgYQjp84Y9F6I06EwbgPAF1_YjwXMSDNKaxvq8BrY_oe_ecUA-H3qcQCn7ci https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/03/elizabeth-holmes-verdict-g...
- JshWright 5y ago
  > her funding came from individuals like former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Walton family, among other wealthy elites. And there we have the crux of why she was prosecuted... You're much better off screwing average people, then it's just "capitalism".
- rswail 5y ago
  That's why she's being prosecuted so heavily, she screwed with the wrong people.
dagw 5y ago
She effectively stole millions. From people who could easily afford to lose it and who should have known better. None of the people she defrauded have a materially worse quality of life than they did before. Her biggest crime was making rich people look stupid, and they REALLY don't like that.

morelisp 5y ago

As long as we send people to prison for 65 years, it should be people who did the kind of things she did.

patrec 5y ago

Personally, I find it desirable that people who commit massive fraud in the health care sector get punished severely (based on whatever charges they are actually convicted of), because chances are someone will actually be physically harmed even if that is hard to prove to a standard necessary for conviction (even if no actual harmful treatment resulted, which seems likely in this case, the misallocation of resources to the fraud means someone will likely be deprived of a treatment they would otherwise have received). So IMO 5 years would be insane -- Madoff got done for 10 years, and his fraud was much more benign (I suspect a very significant percentage of his victims knew the returns were to good to be true and that someone was being defrauded; they just didn't realize it was them).

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago

You don't understand. In our system of capitalism, fleecing investors under false pretenses is the gravest of sins. She must be punished accordingly, in order to make a legal statement to other potential capital thieves.

zzbzq 5y ago

The way I see the world today has convinced me Dante's Inferno had it right: treachery > fraud > violence