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U.S. seeks 15 years for Elizabeth Holmes over Theranos fraud
- factsarelolz 4y ago
- ushakov 4y agoand the corrupt politicians who enabled them
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoeyeroll Oh, please let us know how they were enabled by corrupt politicians. Edit: for those downvoting, actually interested in an argument with specifics of how politicians enabled SBF's fraud.
- acapybara 4y agoThe ties to regulators up to & including SEC Chairman Gary Gensler appear to be really deep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgRjzHx5wtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgRjzHx5wtk Not a good look for the SEC.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoDon't disagree that SBF was obviously trying to curry favor with the regulatory regime, given that it was pretty much all out in the open - indeed, that was the source of CZ's major beef with him. But this kind of shadowy argument that someone's father's ex-boss' best friend's cousin is some sort of smoking gun is nonsense. At the end of the day, there were no implemented regulatory changes that benefited FTX or SBF. All the misappropriation of customer funds, the news about SBF having a secret "back door" for funds transfers happened regardless of any regulatory changes (or, as I stated, lack thereof) in DC.
- memish 4y agoYes, if the relationships were as far removed as you suggest, but it's parents, friends of parents and donor recipients. SBF's parents are Stanford lawyers who specialize in compliance and ethics. Alameda CEO's dad runs the economics department at MIT, where the current SEC Chairman was a professor. Sam was a key crypto advisor to congress and a top political donor. All of these people turned a blind eye to Sam and FTX and Alameda when it was their job to do the opposite. FBX's chief lobbyist is a former CFTC commissioner, who is now distancing himself. https://twitter.com/EpsilonTheory/status/1591194581843836928 https://twitter.com/EpsilonTheory/status/1591194581843836928 Nepotism and corruption played a role here.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoBut, again, to make an argument that those relationships mattered, as it relates to the apparent fraud SBF committed, one would have to argue that somehow the SEC turned a blind eye to FTX in a way they didn't towards other crypto businesses. As others have pointed out, you don't need to appeal to securities law to find that what SBF appears to have done is fraud and theft: FTX's Ts and Cs say they wouldn't lend out customer funds. By all accounts they did lend those funds to Alameda, in addition to the fact that 1 billion in customer deposits is missing. Theft is theft, and I just fail to see (and, to be honest, haven't seen any cogent arguments to the contrary) how a more adversarial SEC would have prevented that.
- friedman23 4y agoIt's hilarious that SBF is going to get put into jail by politicians that he donated hundreds of millions to. And funny enough, the fact that he donated money to them in such a high profile way means that they will likely slam the book on him harder just to "prove" there is no backdoor dealing.
- ushakov 4y agodoesn't make them less corrupt though
- rightbyte 4y agoTrue. Less corrupt than they would be if they fought for him.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoPoliticians put people in jail? I thought judges do that.
- factsarelolz 4y agoWho hires or selects the judges? Yes some are voted in while higher judges are selected by politicians.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoWho selects the politicians?
- etrautmann 4y agoPoliticians don’t put people in jail
- friedman23 4y agoThe president controls the DoJ. Are you saying that the president is not a politician?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- usednet 4y agoMight have to wait a while. If Karpeles, Mashinsky and Ehrlich are still free men things look pretty good for SBF.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
- gadflyinyoureye 4y agoWhen there is enough evidence to bring proper charges that would withstand scrutiny during a trial by jury.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoQuestion for folks with knowledge of the process. Government is also arguing for Holmes to pay $800 million in restitution. Obviously she doesn't have that kind of money (neither even does her heir husband), so people she defrauded are never going to see that. But what happens to her in that case? If the court does sign off on a restitution penalty, is it the equivalent of a creditor's judgment against her? I believe acts of fraud can't be discharged in bankruptcy, so is this judgment something that would hang over her forever? Could the defrauded parties garnish her wages? Just curious as to how the logistics of "unpayable restitution penalties" play out in the real world.
- Fezzik 4y agoGenerally you just have your wages garnished for as long as you have an income. This would include Social Security. If, somehow, you came into significant funds again you could probably negotiate a one time payment to satisfy the judgment. That seems highly unlikely in her case though.
- HyperSane 4y agoHer husband is quite rich.
- swarnie 4y agoDoes debt pass to spouses in the US?
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoGenerally, no, especially debt that occurred before the marriage. That said, California is a community property state, which means that income and debts that are incurred during the marriage are considered the joint property of both spouses. Again though, Holmes debt and her husband's wealth were acquired before their marriage, so in that case it's easy to keep these separate.
- bitexploder 4y agoThis lays the process out: https://www.justice.gov/criminal-vns/restitution-process https://www.justice.gov/criminal-vns/restitution-process
- HyperSane 4y agoWhy is there such a ridiculously long gap between her conviction and sentencing?
- xenospn 4y agoThey had Sunni’s trial as well and the judge deferred sentencing.
- HyperSane 4y agoWhy, they were not tried together.
- indigodaddy 4y agoSomething about a baby
- FireBeyond 4y agoWhich either paints her, in my mind, as delusional, a psychopath of both. I get maternal instincts. I get bodily autonomy. But to make a choice to get pregnant during a trial in which you are facing up to 20 years in federal prison (with all the restrictions on parole that that incurs) was either: "she believes her own shit, to this day, that she was just one step away from a miracle", "she is only focused on herself", or "callous ploy to win favoritism from jurors" (which I also wouldn't put past her, given her multiple chameleonic efforts, above and beyond the turtlenecks and deep voice acting).
- FreakLegion 4y agoIt could just as easily have been a pragmatic decision. She was already in her mid-thirties when indicted and staring down the barrel of prison into her fifties. If she wanted kids, there wasn't going to be a better time.
- misiti3780 4y agoshe is pregnant again too
- hunglee2 4y agoThis may be an unpopular opinion here, but Holmes is the mother of a young child and punishment for her is simultaneously punishment to the innocent child. Justice cannot be served by inflicting injustice on another. We need to be more creative in our sentencing - rather than 10 years then free, how about 25 years under some sort of restriction, that does not deprive child of their mother?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- HyperSane 4y agoShy cynically had that child because she wanted people to think exactly like you are doing.
- bobowzki 4y agoHow does that change anything from the child's perspective?
- rurp 4y agoI don't think we should incentivise criminals to have more kids in these situations.
- codegeek 4y agoIt doesn't but if she gets a lenient sentence, the other guy should get the same. But we all know he won't (most likely). May be then it's a reasonable compromise.
- akudha 4y agoThe other guy is not female, white or blonde. Studies have shown that women get less punishment for the same crime than men. Same way, good looking criminals also get less punishment than not-good looking ones.
- adrr 4y agoMy guess she’ll get 5 years and Sunny will get 15 even though both committed the same crime. Edit: context for my guess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity#Evidence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity#Evidenc...
- ushakov 4y agosorry, removed
- dopamean 4y agoIs this a joke?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- adrr 4y agoMy knowledge of what happened is from reading the book bad blood. It doesn’t portray her as a victim and she’s much worse than Sunny and directly caused someone to commit suicide.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mcculley 4y agoSarcasm should be downvoted.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- metadat 4y agoIt's disappointing that Lizzie Evans is successfully playing the system and getting away with only 15 years or less for egregiously terrible crimes where she massively manipulated and abused everyone's trust from a high position. Meanwhile, Sunny Balwani is facing more charges and possibly more jail time than Lizzie, even though she was clearly the mastermind behind everything. He was her co-conspirator, but if it hadn't been him it'd have been some other sucker. The justice system is so political, it makes no sense.
- nervlord 4y ago
- AdrianB1 4y agoIt is a bit amazing that people that do very bad things and cause huge prejudice that will never be fixed can get away very easy. 15 years is nothing to joke about, but if you do the math of how much money per year that means, it is better than working for a salary and a lot of people would go to prison for 1-2 years for that kind of money. "hey, who can I defraud of 50 million and I get 1 year of prison for it?"
- atlgator 4y agoAlso the fact that men are punished much more severely than women for similar crimes. [1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity
- lostlogin 4y agoHere in New Zealand, white collar fraud is punished much less severely than benefit fraud. It’s all rather depressing.
- nostromo 4y agoWell, not really. The money is long gone. She's now broke and facing jail time. And the judgement is so large, even after prison she'll never have wealth beyond a middle-class lifestyle. She'll be like Jordan Belfort and die with a debt of several hundred million dollars.
- joering2 4y agoIt may be a long shot, but if she knew she is comiting fraud, and may be caught/sentences to bars, she may have stashed investors money in multiple ways, including having third party companies Theranos worked with that were simply a cover to get the money out legally. The size of the company and number of invoice flying back and forth indicates we will probably never find out, but once she's out for good behavior in less than 6 years, she may meet some unknown Joe Doe who will hire her at 7 figures to do nothing, in return for providing goods/services to Theranos during the company run.
- Sapere_Aude 4y ago[flagged]
- lostlogin 4y agoThat isn’t the subject at hand.
- LightG 4y ago
- type-r 4y agohttps://archive.ph/aahpU https://archive.ph/aahpU