3 ms·
It seems odd to me how she's being punished so much for defrauding investors, but not for endangering patients with fraudulent blood tests. Is the latter just
by gopled 4y ago
It seems odd to me how she's being punished so much for defrauding investors, but not for endangering patients with fraudulent blood tests.
Is the latter just easier to prosecute because of the paper trail? Or is the law biased more towards punishing financial crimes?
- datalopers 4y agoTheranos raised $1B; FTX raised $2B. So we can assume that SBF gets 22yrs prison right?
- jdthedisciple 4y agoNope, probably much more since he isn't a female. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- quantified 4y agoI'd triangulate between Holmes and Madoff.
- pxue 4y agothere's clear case of defrauding investors AND creditors. that's more than $2B + $8B disappeared into the void.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoI thought they contracted that out to companies that did real blood testing.
- johndhi 4y agobecause the prosecutors don't have good evidence of anyone actually harmed by the bad tests, and the testing agreements probably got the patients to agree if it didn't work they wouldn't rely on it.
- kjs3 4y agoprosecutors don't have good evidence of anyone actually harmed by the bad tests I think it's more nuanced than that. Even if the prosecutors had mountains of evidence of harm to patients, defense attorneys have a lot of experience casting doubt on that kind of evidence making trail very tricky. My wife works in the medical/legal overlap and constantly sees stuff like "yes the patient spent 30 years working in an asbestos plant next to an industrial incinerator, but they smoked a cigarette once in the bathroom in high school so you can't say their cancer came from any one cause". And sometimes juries buy it. But when you accumulate mountains of evidence that basically says "yeah, we know our stuff doesn't work...fake it till you make it, yo", you've got counterarguments like "we were just kidding" and "it's all fake" that isn't as resonate with the jury. So, the prosecution goes with the high-confidence charges.
- tekla 4y agoFinancial crimes are easier to prove. Same reason Al Capone went to jail for tax evasion.
- kjs3 4y agoAl Capone went to jail for tax evasion. She got convicted for fraud because it was easy to prosecute, she got sentenced at least partially for cynically endangering peoples lives. There's clearly an argument that this is an abuse of the legal system, but she's not being singled out here.
- _skel 4y agoPeople don't get convicted for doing bad things. They get convicted for breaking specific laws. In this case, the laws against defrauding investors were clearly broken, to the extent that a jury unanimously agreed they were broken. Whatever laws might have applied to the patients did not meet that bar. I keep seeing a lot of "throw them in jail" posts here on HN and it's bad. It should be very hard for the state to jail someone. It should require extremely solid proof that they committed a crime which was defined in law. If we lose that principle, we revert from rule of law to rule of judges and mob rule. Some people like Holmes don't get punished in a way that satisfies everyone they hurt, and people like SBF might never get punished, and that's fine because lowering the burden of proof would only result in more injustice.
- GMoromisato 4y agoI think you're just throwing the trolley switch differently from me.
- deepspace 4y agoThe fact that the law punishes defrauding investors, but not defrauding patients or employees, just shows that those laws are written by rich people, for rich people.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoThe law also punishes defrauding and harming patients. Prosecutors just didn't prove that actually occurred.