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Elizabeth Holmes ordered to pay $452M restitution
- justrealist 3y agoIf restitution was the most important goal here, they'd allow her to work a (monitored) job on house-arrest with massively garnished wages. Seems like silly posturing to order massive restitution while also sending her to prison — you can't have your cake and eat it too. Make up your mind which is more important — punishment, or compensation for victims.
- ur-whale 3y agoAren't you somewhat leaving out the fact that she may still have assets (she may not, I don't know) ?
- hinkley 3y agoTo paraphrase Bo Burnham, and she still will but it’s not as fun now. If she has $50 million squirreled away somewhere she won’t be able to spend it openly. She can be sneaky and keep a slightly comfortable life but she’ll never again have an opportunity to be openly decadent. Debts handled, excellent health care, a little bribery perhaps, and an occasionally get away to somewhere remote, but no conspicuous consumption, which for these people seems to be more than half of the fun.
- sebzim4500 3y agoHow do you get excellent health care when you pay under the table? Surely no one reputable is going to take cash?
- hinkley 3y agoMedical tourism was the angle I was thinking.
- ur-whale 3y ago> How do you get excellent health care when you pay under the table? As is very common, you're thinking within the confines of your borders.
- sebzim4500 3y agoTypically when rich people outside of the US/EU need specialist healthcare they fly to the US/EU. Is your claim that 'excellent' health care can be found outside of these areas, or that paying cash for healthcare is a reasonable proposition in the US/Europe?
- hinkley 3y agoWhen people of intermediate means need major surgery, India is now emerging as a place where you can get better than 80% of the healthcare for 20% of the cost.
- morelisp 3y agoWhat job is she going to get that will get anywhere near $452M? > posturing to order massive restitution while also sending her to prison Under what legal theory can someone only be punished once in one way?
- wetpaws 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive and flamebait comments and ignoring our many requests to stop. Not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 100721 3y ago> What job is she going to get that will get anywhere near $452M? Politician, perhaps.
- happytiger 3y agoTake my upvote. That was clever.
- drexlspivey 3y ago> What job is she going to get that will get anywhere near $452M? She should launch a new startup
- 908B64B197 3y ago> they'd allow her to work a (monitored) job on house-arrest with massively garnished wages. What is she qualified for?
- Paul_S 3y agoTry not paying alimony and see what happens. Go to jail AND continue having to pay them. No difference here.
- wirrbel 3y agoI think it’s totally justified to add bankruptcy to a prison sentence in this case. She wasn’t even jailed for the bodily harm she did.
- shkkmo 3y agoRestitution can be paid out of many types of income. Book deals, inheritance, future earnings after she gets out of prison (she probably won't serve the entire 11 years), etc. In some states, the restitution could also be taken from her spouse's income. It seems unlikely that she will ever pay the full restitution amount, regardless of how much jail time she serves.
- justrealist 3y agoThis is federal prison so it's extremely unlikely she will serve less than 85% of the 11 years. It would take a presidential pardon to change this.
- seanhunter 3y agoWho says restitution is the most important goal? The actual goals of the US DOJ are set out here https://www.justice.gov/doj/doj-strategic-plan-2022-2026 https://www.justice.gov/doj/doj-strategic-plan-2022-2026 1: Uphold the Rule of Law 2: Keep Our Country Safe 3: Protect Civil Rights 4: Ensure Economic Opportunity and Fairness for All 5: Administer Just Court and Correctional Systems
- justrealist 3y agoLike I said, it's fine for the goal to be punishment. But then don't order these silly un-payable restitutions. It's clearly just posturing that doesn't help the victims.
- ortusdux 3y agoThis order all but guarantees that, even if she games the system and gets time served, she will never have the opportunity to reoffend.
- justrealist 3y agoI don't follow how this affects her ability to run a company post-release. It just affects her ability to get (somewhat) rich from it.
- tehjoker 3y agoHolmes probably deserves all this, but we should recognize that the reason she's being punished and no other CEO is is because she was a bit of an outsider and she managed to con top members of the ruling class. Her investors were war criminals and other American elites. You don't con them out of their money and get away with it.
- lisasays 3y agoHer investors were war criminals Specifically?
- sdfghswe 3y agoHe's referring to Kissinger, obviously.
- tehjoker 3y agoYep, also Mattis and Shultz
- vkou 3y agoWho is responsible for deployment of incendiary weapons, including white phosphorus against civilians. (Obviously, EH is a criminal and a fraud, even if she's defrauding other criminals.)
- tehjoker 3y agoAgreed. I'm not saying she isn't merely that we should think about why is this happening to her and not others with the implication that many more elites should be in prison not that she should get off.
- lisasays 3y agoAgreed on Kissinger and Mattis. I need more substantiation in regard to Shultz (beyond his delusional policy supports, here and there).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jvm 3y agoI'm curious, what actually happens when you're fined some comically large amount of money? Do you just immediately declare bankruptcy and let the courts carve up your assets? Is that usually the end of that or do you still end up having your wages garnished after bankruptcy?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ipnon 3y agoIf it was as easy as declaring bankruptcy I don’t think anyone would ever receive alimony or child support.
- nmjohn 3y agoChild support generally can't be removed in bankruptcy
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- quietbritishjim 3y agoThat is precisely the point of the comment you replied to.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nmjohn 3y agoI've read it numerous times after initial agreeing with you, and I don't think that is the case. To me it sounds like they are saying if declaring bankruptcy were that easy, nobody would be receiving child support because everyone who owed it would just declare bankruptcy to get out of paying it.
- deleted 3y ago
- paxys 3y agoDoes anyone know if her husband will be responsible for this amount? They supposedly got married in 2019, which is after the fraud but before the trial and ruling.
- hiatus 3y agoYes, it's in the article.
- paxys 3y agoWhere does it say that?
- nickthegreek 3y agoIt doesnt.
- hiatus 3y agoSorry, I was thinking of a bbc article that directly said they would split the fine. [1] > In his restitution ruling, Davila determined that Holmes and Balwani should pay Murdoch $125 million —- by far the most among the investors listed in his order. The restitution also requires the co-conspirators in the Theranos scam to pay $40 million in Walgreens, which became an investor in the startup after agreeing to provide some of the flawed blood tests in its pharmacies in 2013. Another $14.5 million is owed to Safeway, which has also agreed to be a Theranos business partner before backing out. The BBC article: > In a separate ruling, US District Judge Edward Davila also ordered Holmes to pay $452m (£363.8m) to victims. She will split the multi-million dollar payment with her former romantic and business partner, ex-Theranos boss Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65620371 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65620371
- ahahahahah 3y agoThat has nothing to do with her husband, who was the person at question here.
- ExMachina73 3y agoI posted this comment last time her incarceration made the front page - will she report or flee? I'll go out on limb and say she doesn't report for prison.
- hunglee2 3y agoElizabeth Holmes is an All-American hero for defrauding Rupert Murdoch, Walton family, Jim Mattis, Betsy DeVos et al. Rehabilitation of her reputation is inevitable, why not start here and now
- lawgimenez 3y agoRemember that new york times tried to sympathize her or I don’t know what you call this kind of article. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/business/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-interview.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/business/elizabeth-holmes...
- netsharc 3y agoThe author of that piece was first charmed but her editor snapped her out of it, and I feel she manages to convey to the reader that the whole Liz thing was another bedazzlement move: https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/07/elizabeth-holmes-left-to-her-own-devices/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/07/elizabeth-holmes-left-to-h... She even wrote in the NYT piece: "If you are in her presence, it is impossible not to believe her, not to be taken with her and be taken in by her.", and that is not meant to be complimentary... But hey, if you wrote an article and many many people, even in your own business, misunderstand it as fan-girling, did you succeed at your job?
- jdm2212 3y ago> But hey, if you wrote an article and many many people, even in your own business, misunderstand it as fan-girling, did you succeed at your job? There are a lot of people who post dumb hot takes without reading the article to the end, that very much includes people in journalism.
- groby_b 3y agoHaving read the article to the end - it was an extremely bad article.
- feoren 3y ago> "If you are in her presence, it is impossible not to believe her, not to be taken with her and be taken in by her." Bullshit. She's not a sorcerer. She's not Jafar. It's your choice whether you turn off your bullshit meter or not. This sounds like "you would have murdered that hobo too if you thought you could get away with it!" No, I have no desire to murder hobos, and "we'd all do it!" is the opinion of a deeply troubled person. "We'd all believe obvious stupid bullshit if a pretty lady looked into our soul with those weird alien dead eyes that she has!" I've seen her talk and she just looked like a robot pretending to be Steve Jobs, spouting nonsense that anyone with either a modest understanding of the subject or a willingness to fact-check her on absolutely anything would easily see through. Absolute bullshit excuse.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoI remember back when Gary Bowser got found guilty of $14.5 million restitution for Nintendo, and would pay back 20%-30% of his income for (basically) the rest of his life for providing Switch tools that offered automatic downloading of pirated software. The general feeling was that this was "Unethical, immoral, inappropriate regardless of what he did, contrary to rehabilitation." Now we have Elizabeth Holmes. $452 Million in restitution. Yes, what she did was much, much worse - but is anyone seriously arguing this is immoral, unethical, inappropriate regardless of what she did, contrary to rehabilitation? I would say that it appears to me to be a double-standard regarding paying back large fines for crimes.
- lancesells 3y agoShe raised $1.4B based on fraud/lies. Are you saying that shouldn't be paid back?
- newaccount74 3y agoIt should be paid back if she still had it. But it's questionable whether burdening criminals with debts they can never repay is the best solution. Since the creditors have no chance of getting that money back, it's just an additional punishment. But she already got jail time as a punishment. I think, once you served your time, you should get a chance of a new start, without being forever burdened with debt. Also, I think that bedazzling investors is not the worst thing she did. The worst thing is that she sold patients medical tests that didn't work.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lancesells 3y agoI'm not sure I agree without knowing more details but I think that's a fair way to look at it.
- gemstones 3y agoPerhaps some crimes are big enough that there are multiple punishments. It is valuable for a society to show that some crimes will literally ruin your life, as an example to others. Her rehabilitation will not make society whole - her best and highest calling now is to be an example of what happens when you endanger people at that scale.
- photochemsyn 3y agoIt does look like a lot of shady behavior went on behind the scenes and dropping all the blame on Holmes might be a strategy designed to limit the fallout. The military-industrial contracting angle (which Holmes apparently used as a big selling point to lure in more investors) got set up with help from Theranos board member Jim Mattis, for example: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/mattis-theranos-questions/ https://taskandpurpose.com/news/mattis-theranos-questions/ > "Mattis's eagerness to deploy the technology was known and noticed at lower ranks. Near the end of the month, Shoemaker wrote another email to an undisclosed recipient: “The Theranos issue has taken on quite the life of its own within the Army. General Mattis who is the 4-star general in charge of Central Command … wants to see the Theranos device put into Afghanistan." Of course Mattis claims to have been completely hoodwinked, and didn't intentionally act to mislead the public and investors. Being politically connected probably helped him avoid prosecution, however.
- timetraveller26 3y agoFor anybody interested on how a fraud like this came to be, Hulu's series The dropout is a really high quality depiction.
- sys_64738 3y agoI just want her in prison where she belongs. There should be a warrant for her arrest which should drag her off to prison where she belongs.