5 ms·

I'm happy he got even more than Holmes (11 vs 13). The book made him sound worse than she was and he was the mastermind internally at keeping the staff working

by dmix 4y ago

I'm happy he got even more than Holmes (11 vs 13). The book made him sound worse than she was and he was the mastermind internally at keeping the staff working and building a culture of misdirection and obedience. He was firing people on an almost daily basis for a while whenever someone questioned their bullshit. Holmes was the showpiece, who got to play the pretend female Steve Jobs visionary role to the press and investors. And naturally took most of the heat. But the house of cards would probably have fallen apart way sooner if he didn't run the show in the background.

LeroyRaz 4y ago
I read the book and I disagree. Ultimately creating a toxic work environment is not why they are going to jail, but for deceiving the public, and investors. Holmes (the person playing Steve Jobs) lead that. I have little doubt that if the genders were reversed that Holmes sentence could be easily twice Sunny's.
- highwaylights 4y ago
  This - I mentioned in another thread when Holmes was sentenced that even if convicted she'll not spend that long in jail (maybe 5 years, most of it on license I would guess?). I suspect Balwani will serve most if not all of the 13 years. I've no wish to defend either of these people given what they've done, I just think it's worth pointing out that ignoring the disparity doesn't make it go away.
  - nirav72 4y ago
    I thought federal sentences did not have parole? So a person has to serve their full term.
    - zaroth 4y ago
      You thought right. Parent comment is wrong. Many random “bet she won’t serve half of that” comments were corrected in the original discussion.
      - highwaylights 4y ago
        I'm not familiar with how this works, and I can't edit my comment now, but I learned something new today. I'm also really trying not to believe that this will be mitigated in some other way. (Is it possible she could serve some of her sentence at home if a judge rules that way, for example? This is a genuine question btw).
icedchai 4y ago
I read the book and also agree with this. She was the CEO, but he "ran" the company. He also put millions of his own money into it to keep it afloat. He should've been the "adult supervision", so to speak.
- highwaylights 4y ago
  I've seen a lot of excuses from CEO's for why they aren't responsible for their actions but "I didn't have adult supervision" takes the cake.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    Eh, Holmes was 19 when she dropped out of colleges. Despite legal adulthood, people are disproportionately stupid and/or naive at that age. It by no means excuses what she did and I think her sentence was at least reasonable and perhaps too lenient. But I think age and the lack of more experienced people with level heads around her is 1) a slight mitigating circumstance and 2) partly her own fault. In short, adult supervision should at least be a consideration. Had she be 17 at the start, a difference of a mere two years, that might seem more clear (to some). Legal adulthood at 18 doesn’t confer some magical maturity and wisdom so we shouldn’t regard it much differently than 25-27. To preempt arguments that this went on without Sunny for some years after she turned 19: 1) Plenty of people with some experience and maturity could have been in her circle of influence before then and 2) I did say age was only a slight mitigating circumstance.
    - highwaylights 4y ago
      I don't disagree with any of what you've said here but then that means the problem is the system itself. If teenagers aren't responsible enough to run companies, the law shouldn't allow them to run companies. Make the minimum age of running a company 25. I imagine a lot of YCombinator founders would disagree with this, but I also imagine those same people would agree that they're responsible for their actions. I also imagine the Carmacks/Zuckerbergs/Jobs/Gates of the world would take umbrage with such a ban. What shouldn't happen is allowing someone leniency after fraudulently running a health company that has caused harm to innocent people.
fasthands9 4y ago
I disagree. She was the CEO and ultimately had the most control. She also did the most lying to investors. We don't know what SBF will be charged with yet - but how would we feel if one of the other employees who did more of the actual transfers/faulty accounting got more of a sentence? As long as it clear that the CEO (in this case SBF) knew about the wrongdoing I think it is fair to hold them to the harshest sentence - even if they are not the "mastermind". It's not like Holmes was a random former actress they found to be a clueless spokesperson. She was a smart person with plenty of resources and education.
- dmix 4y ago
  > but how would we feel if one of the other employees who did more of the actual transfers/faulty accounting got more of a sentence Sunny wasn't just one of the employees, he was essentially a cofounder and was Elizabeth's closest advisor. The book made it sound like he ran the actual company while she was distracted with the media and having dinners with politicians. Re: SBF, he owned 90% of Alameda and was responsible for sending them FTX customer funds to cover their loses, so he will always be more guilty than the girl who ran it and likely made the actual loses. These details matter. CEO's have more control formally but who did the dirty work is most important.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - fasthands9 4y ago
    I'm not saying he was a random employee but he was definitely lower on the totem poll. Holmes could have had him removed from the company at any time. The same is not true of Sunny removing Holmes. I have also read the book and agree Holmes was more into the PR stuff and investor stuff. But again - the crimes had to do with lying to investors.
    - dmix 4y ago
      I feel like the biggest source of truth was inside the company. Controlling the employees is what kept it hidden for so long and an employee was what took it down. But you might be right that most of the fraud was via investors. The companies operations were just a fiction after a certain point.
adrr 4y ago
Theranos started in 2003 and had raised $200m+ before sunny joined in 2009. Fraud started before him.
- dmix 4y ago
  Well, technically early on it was a real business and a genuine attempt to create the blood meter. It was when it became apparent it wasn't going to work but they still maintained that fiction was when it turned into a fraud. A legitimate startup morphed into a fraud, coincidentally not long after Sunny joined and started secretly dating her.
  - wanderlust123 4y ago
    You are trying way too hard to shift the blame here. I wonder why that is?
    - ashwagary 4y ago
      When the black natives tell us America is still a very racist country where privilege and punishment is concerned, we should listen. Some Asians stay in denial until blindsided by reality.
    - 77pt77 4y ago
      Apparently he brainwashed her. I kid you not. This was an actual defense for Holmes.
  - adrr 4y ago
    Wasn't it always a fiction? Her premise for Theranos was to perform blood tests with minimal amount of blood even though the science wasn't there. I would love see a pitch decks for the raises prior to Sunny. How do you raise $200m when VC money was hard to come by during the recession?
bitwize 4y ago
I think Holmes played a bigger role in the fraud than people give her credit for, whether she "meant to" defraud people or not, I don't think she was like "I'm gonna deceive all these people" but rather "I need to keep the money flowing so that I can develop the technology to make this a reality". That said, of the two of them, Balwani was the true gangsta. He came in seemingly already knowing how to run a criminal enterprise, and applied those principles to Theranos.
- lupire 4y ago
  Holmes never and inkling of a plan to make the tech a reality. She was just a figurehead for a scam, the ICO of its day.
ffggvv 4y ago
shocked a brown male got a worse sentence than a white female for the same crime
- ineedasername 4y ago
  They were charged for different crimes and had slightly different roles in perpetuating the fraud within & without the company. Whether or not young white females get more leniency isn’t even quite the issue: That assumes they might get less than deserved. That is a separate questions from whether or not a brown male got more than deserved. The questions may even have some overlap in a Venn diagram but they are not correlated 1:1.
- lupire 4y ago
  Brown male... with 2 more degrees and decades of experience in business, who did the criminal operations.
  - cameldrv 4y ago
    What if Sheryl Sandberg had convinced Mark Zuckerberg to commit some sort of fraud at Facebook and they both got convicted. Can you possibly imagine Sandberg serving more time than Zuckerberg? The ages and age differences are very similar.

by dmix 4y ago

LeroyRaz 4y ago

I read the book and I disagree. Ultimately creating a toxic work environment is not why they are going to jail, but for deceiving the public, and investors. Holmes (the person playing Steve Jobs) lead that. I have little doubt that if the genders were reversed that Holmes sentence could be easily twice Sunny's.

highwaylights 4y ago
This - I mentioned in another thread when Holmes was sentenced that even if convicted she'll not spend that long in jail (maybe 5 years, most of it on license I would guess?). I suspect Balwani will serve most if not all of the 13 years. I've no wish to defend either of these people given what they've done, I just think it's worth pointing out that ignoring the disparity doesn't make it go away.
- nirav72 4y ago
  I thought federal sentences did not have parole? So a person has to serve their full term.
  - zaroth 4y ago
    You thought right. Parent comment is wrong. Many random “bet she won’t serve half of that” comments were corrected in the original discussion.
    - highwaylights 4y ago
      I'm not familiar with how this works, and I can't edit my comment now, but I learned something new today. I'm also really trying not to believe that this will be mitigated in some other way. (Is it possible she could serve some of her sentence at home if a judge rules that way, for example? This is a genuine question btw).

icedchai 4y ago

I read the book and also agree with this. She was the CEO, but he "ran" the company. He also put millions of his own money into it to keep it afloat. He should've been the "adult supervision", so to speak.

highwaylights 4y ago
I've seen a lot of excuses from CEO's for why they aren't responsible for their actions but "I didn't have adult supervision" takes the cake.
- ineedasername 4y ago
  Eh, Holmes was 19 when she dropped out of colleges. Despite legal adulthood, people are disproportionately stupid and/or naive at that age. It by no means excuses what she did and I think her sentence was at least reasonable and perhaps too lenient. But I think age and the lack of more experienced people with level heads around her is 1) a slight mitigating circumstance and 2) partly her own fault. In short, adult supervision should at least be a consideration. Had she be 17 at the start, a difference of a mere two years, that might seem more clear (to some). Legal adulthood at 18 doesn’t confer some magical maturity and wisdom so we shouldn’t regard it much differently than 25-27. To preempt arguments that this went on without Sunny for some years after she turned 19: 1) Plenty of people with some experience and maturity could have been in her circle of influence before then and 2) I did say age was only a slight mitigating circumstance.
  - highwaylights 4y ago
    I don't disagree with any of what you've said here but then that means the problem is the system itself. If teenagers aren't responsible enough to run companies, the law shouldn't allow them to run companies. Make the minimum age of running a company 25. I imagine a lot of YCombinator founders would disagree with this, but I also imagine those same people would agree that they're responsible for their actions. I also imagine the Carmacks/Zuckerbergs/Jobs/Gates of the world would take umbrage with such a ban. What shouldn't happen is allowing someone leniency after fraudulently running a health company that has caused harm to innocent people.

fasthands9 4y ago

I disagree. She was the CEO and ultimately had the most control. She also did the most lying to investors. We don't know what SBF will be charged with yet - but how would we feel if one of the other employees who did more of the actual transfers/faulty accounting got more of a sentence? As long as it clear that the CEO (in this case SBF) knew about the wrongdoing I think it is fair to hold them to the harshest sentence - even if they are not the "mastermind". It's not like Holmes was a random former actress they found to be a clueless spokesperson. She was a smart person with plenty of resources and education.

dmix 4y ago
> but how would we feel if one of the other employees who did more of the actual transfers/faulty accounting got more of a sentence Sunny wasn't just one of the employees, he was essentially a cofounder and was Elizabeth's closest advisor. The book made it sound like he ran the actual company while she was distracted with the media and having dinners with politicians. Re: SBF, he owned 90% of Alameda and was responsible for sending them FTX customer funds to cover their loses, so he will always be more guilty than the girl who ran it and likely made the actual loses. These details matter. CEO's have more control formally but who did the dirty work is most important.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fasthands9 4y ago
  I'm not saying he was a random employee but he was definitely lower on the totem poll. Holmes could have had him removed from the company at any time. The same is not true of Sunny removing Holmes. I have also read the book and agree Holmes was more into the PR stuff and investor stuff. But again - the crimes had to do with lying to investors.
  - dmix 4y ago
    I feel like the biggest source of truth was inside the company. Controlling the employees is what kept it hidden for so long and an employee was what took it down. But you might be right that most of the fraud was via investors. The companies operations were just a fiction after a certain point.

adrr 4y ago

Theranos started in 2003 and had raised $200m+ before sunny joined in 2009. Fraud started before him.

dmix 4y ago
Well, technically early on it was a real business and a genuine attempt to create the blood meter. It was when it became apparent it wasn't going to work but they still maintained that fiction was when it turned into a fraud. A legitimate startup morphed into a fraud, coincidentally not long after Sunny joined and started secretly dating her.
- wanderlust123 4y ago
  You are trying way too hard to shift the blame here. I wonder why that is?
  - ashwagary 4y ago
    When the black natives tell us America is still a very racist country where privilege and punishment is concerned, we should listen. Some Asians stay in denial until blindsided by reality.
  - 77pt77 4y ago
    Apparently he brainwashed her. I kid you not. This was an actual defense for Holmes.
- adrr 4y ago
  Wasn't it always a fiction? Her premise for Theranos was to perform blood tests with minimal amount of blood even though the science wasn't there. I would love see a pitch decks for the raises prior to Sunny. How do you raise $200m when VC money was hard to come by during the recession?

bitwize 4y ago

I think Holmes played a bigger role in the fraud than people give her credit for, whether she "meant to" defraud people or not, I don't think she was like "I'm gonna deceive all these people" but rather "I need to keep the money flowing so that I can develop the technology to make this a reality". That said, of the two of them, Balwani was the true gangsta. He came in seemingly already knowing how to run a criminal enterprise, and applied those principles to Theranos.

lupire 4y ago
Holmes never and inkling of a plan to make the tech a reality. She was just a figurehead for a scam, the ICO of its day.

ffggvv 4y ago

shocked a brown male got a worse sentence than a white female for the same crime

ineedasername 4y ago
They were charged for different crimes and had slightly different roles in perpetuating the fraud within & without the company. Whether or not young white females get more leniency isn’t even quite the issue: That assumes they might get less than deserved. That is a separate questions from whether or not a brown male got more than deserved. The questions may even have some overlap in a Venn diagram but they are not correlated 1:1.
lupire 4y ago
Brown male... with 2 more degrees and decades of experience in business, who did the criminal operations.
- cameldrv 4y ago
  What if Sheryl Sandberg had convinced Mark Zuckerberg to commit some sort of fraud at Facebook and they both got convicted. Can you possibly imagine Sandberg serving more time than Zuckerberg? The ages and age differences are very similar.