4 ms·

He broke an unwritten, cardinal rule, which is to never steal from the rich.

showmexyz 1y ago
Still what she did was fraud. From the article - "Still, the judge criticized the bank, saying “they have a lot to blame themselves” for after failing to do adequate due diligence. He quickly added, though, that he was “punishing her conduct and not JPMorgan’s stupidity.” "
- mothballed 1y ago
  Not to justify it, but why isn't the founder of UPS (edit: Fedex) in prison? I don't think it was legal to go and literally spend their money at the casino. If you turn a profit no one cares (unless you're Shkreli, don't think his investors lost money, but he pissed off some politicians because he said the quiet parts out loud about how the pharma industry works), if you lose it's fraud. When all the winners are doing it, hard to compete otherwise... not that it makes it right.
  - privatelypublic 1y ago
    What are you thinking the crime would be? He bet his company on a literal toss of the dice instead of the routine figurative ones. Outside of Bribery and ?SarBox? (Whichever regulation handles kickbacks, etc), I can't think of anything.
    - mothballed 1y ago
      If you spend investor money at a literal casino while advertising a non-casino related business, and pay the investors back, probably people will view you as not committing a crime. If you get investor money or get a loan on the basis of funding logistics investments, bet it on roulette red, and go bankrupt, I would expect you'd be looking at hard jail time for fraud. So I'm thinking the crime would be nothing, because he was a winner, and the optics totally changed, and fraud relies on very subjective opinions of a jury.
      - bryanlarsen 1y ago
        There are lots of examples of people going to jail despite investors getting their money back, like SBF and Shkreli. Even Madoff investors got 94% of their investments back.
        mothballed 1y ago
        Shkreli is the only one of those 3 that fully paid back his investors, and it took him pissing off virtually every politician and a bunch of wealthy insurance executives/administrators to get enough resources mobilized to get a conviction (and being one of the most uncharismatic people on earth, which didn't help him at trial). I think you are definitely in a much worse place for a fraud conviction if you lose money.
        bryanlarsen 1y ago
        News stories said SBF investors were going to get 118% of their money back. Did that not happen? https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/08/ftx-crypto-fraud-victims-to-get-their-money-back-plus-interest/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/08/ftx-crypto-fraud-victims-t...
        mothballed 1y ago
        No because the assets ('money') deposited to SBF were crypto, and you just gamified it by doing a currency exchange to USD while disingenuously failing to note that in that time the USD value of the crypto went up. If you want an accurate reflection, note how much of the crypto deposited went in, and then how much came back out after SBF lost it. This would be like me depositing USD, someone stealing some of it, then you bragging the value went up because I have a larger quantity as measured in Venezuelan Bolivars. What actually happened is their % they recouped was less than 100 until you artificially change to an entirely different currency.
        bryanlarsen 1y ago
        Sure, if you believe crypto is a currency.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    > (unless you're Shkreli, don't think his investors lost money, but he pissed off some politicians because he said the quiet parts out loud about how the pharma industry works) What's the TL;DR? His wikipedia page doesn't make it obvious.
    - mothballed 1y ago
      Shkreli's schtick was to buy out or control pharma companies that had a monopoly and jack the everliving fuck out of the prices. He had some programs for uninsured people, but he would milk the insurance companies absolutely dry, which gave him some wild profits. This made a bunch of powerful people absolutely enraged, as he was basically publicly bragging about jacking the ever living fuck out of the prices. Pharma companies do this but Shkreli would publicly say it and tell the truth that basically the other companies were doing it while pretending to be good people, and he was only being honest about it. Poor people were pissed because they were told they couldn't get their drugs (I'm unaware if the program that allowed uninsured people to get them for cheap was real or not), and the rich insurance people pissed because he was basically he was bilking them. So they went back and discovered one or some of his other early enterprises weren't profitable, but that he had used money he made off his later pharma enterprises to pay back his earlier investors. In trial, his investors testified they were happy with the situation, lost no money, and would invest with him again. But they still convicted him for fraud, even despite the 'victims' themselves did not believe they were defrauded. It didn't help that Shkreli is probably one of the most profoundly unlikeable people you can possible listen to, unless you're not bothered to hear a hyper-capitalist be honest about how they do business.
      - potato3732842 1y ago
        Sounds like basically the big boy version of how all the other psychiatrists who run plausibly deniable pill mills will screech about the one running a flagrant pill mill until they lose their license.
      - notmyjob 1y ago
        Victims not wanting prosecution doesn’t absolve the perpetrator as wife beaters learn all the time. I also think Skhreli’s biggest mistake was threatening Hillary Clinton.
  - 1123581321 1y ago
    There is truth to this. She was exposed because JP Morgan ran a marketing campaign that converted extremely poorly. Better purchased data might've prevented significant forensics. The poor due diligence had already been signed off. While she committed fraud, I feel sorry for her because of her naivety. It must've been a sick moment when they asked to examine the data during due diligence. If she'd known that would be used for marketing integration so quickly, maybe she would have backed out of the deal.
    - miltonlost 1y ago
      From the complaint: > In particular, CC-1 and JAVICE asked Engineer-1 to supplement a list of Frank’s website visitors with additional data fields containing synthetic data. > Engineer-1 was uncomfortable with the request and stated, in sum and substance, “I don’t want to do anything illegal.” JAVICE and CC-1 claimed to Engineer-1 that it was legal. JAVICE stated to Engineer-1, in sum and substance, “We don’t want to end up in orange jumpsuits.” Engineer-1 declined the request from JAVICE and CC-1. She's not naive. She was told this was illegal and then did it still. She knew this was fraud.
      - 1123581321 1y ago
        Yes, read the same. Naive in thinking she could get past that and they wouldn’t do anything particularly revealing with the data. A smarter fraudster would’ve backed out earlier with less damage.
    - IncreasePosts 1y ago
      She's so naive, she just hung around until someone found out the fraud. It made me wonder what she was thinking when her $30M share landed in her bank account. "Whee, I got away with it", "it's their problem now"? I don't think I would commit fraud, but if I did it for that amount, I would be on a flight to Malaysia or some other place with no extradition with the US!
  - curiousObject 1y ago
    why isn't the founder of UPS in prison? I don't think it was legal to go and literally spend their money at the casino That was FedEx’s founder, Fred Smith. It wasn’t UPS He only had $5,000 of funds remaining, which he gambled playing blackjack, so the potential loss to investors was small. He’d already lost almost all their investments through operating FeDex
    - FireBeyond 1y ago
      The investors? At that point he had been stiffing his pilots on wages for weeks or months, and with many also paying fuel bills on their personal credit cards/checks, since many fuelers had canceled FedEx's accounts. Yeah, $5K isn't a whole lot, but if I'm a pilot struggling to put food on my family's table, and the CEO takes company money to Vegas, I'm not thinking "Oh, but the investors" or "Sure, it's not that much money anyway". I don't see why people (not saying you, in particular) see this as some heroic founder "risking it all". He wasn't. He was risking the company's "all", after asking the employees to suck up his mismanagement.
      - curiousObject 1y ago
        some heroic founder "risking it all". He wasn't. He was risking the company's "all", after asking the employees to suck up his mismanagement. I agree. He was asking employees not to cash their paychecks sometimes. $5000 is inconsequential compared to that forced investment from employees and business partners
      - red_rech 1y ago
        [dead]
  - IncreasePosts 1y ago
    There's no knowledge as to whether he used company money, or personal cash/line of credit. In fact, there's no knowledge of the story is even true, apart from what one dead man wrote!
troyvit 1y ago
I was about to go on a rant about, "Why is it ethical to put people in jail for doing things that only affect money? Was anybody at JPMorgan hurt as bad as jail will hurt this person?" But you already answered the question.
- fourseventy 1y ago
  If I steal all your money I shouldn't go to jail?
  - troyvit 1y ago
    I personally believe money crimes should have money punishments and corporal crimes could have corporal punishments. If you steal from me and go to jail how did I benefit? If you steal from me and I get a bunch of $ for pain and suffering and you get your pay docked for n years that seems good.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
taytus 1y ago
same as Theranos
arbuge 1y ago
She
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
> He broke an unwritten, cardinal rule, which is to never steal from the rich. "She". The name is "Charlie," but it's a young woman. And, like another young woman, she stole from the rich, and got jailed. She'll probably get a federal minimum-security prison (no fences and a golf course). They aren't quite "Camp Cupcake," but they are a far cry from places like Leavenworth (I've known folks that have done time in both).
Aurornis 1y ago
Believe it or not, smaller fraudsters get prosecuted all the time, too. One of the news reporters I followed on Twitter in my area liked to follow all of the small cases of real estate and business fraud in my area. There were a lot of prosecutions for people who were stealing <$10K at a time through affinity fraud and fake business investments. You just don't hear about them as much because someone going to jail for stealing $60K from a couple families from their church in a fake real estate scheme isn't as exciting as a massive fraud against JP Morgan.
- HankStallone 1y ago
  A few years ago the manager of our local Menards got convicted of stealing over a half-million dollars over 5 years. She only got 180 days, too, and was allowed to leave the jail for work. Depending on how high on the hog she lived for those five years, she might figure it was worth it. I knew one local HVAC company where the office manager skimmed off six figures over something like 20 years before she got caught. Just slow and steady, never taking enough to be obvious, I guess. It happens more than people would think.
  - wil421 1y ago
    I knew a guy whose parents basically invented thrift stores. He’s accountant did the same thing while he was battling drug addiction. Not sure if she ever got prosecuted I think the owner wanted to move on. Then he died of a heart attack.
rdtsc 1y ago
> He broke an unwritten, cardinal rule, which is to never steal from the rich. Right from the article > Addressing the court before she was sentenced, Javice, "she was" ... The title even: > Charlie Javice sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale of her startup "her startup" ... Kind of curious, how did you determine their gender? Guessing, saw the title on HN only without clicking on the link assumed it must be a "him"?

Still what she did was fraud. From the article - "Still, the judge criticized the bank, saying “they have a lot to blame themselves” for after failing to do adequate due diligence. He quickly added, though, that he was “punishing her conduct and not JPMorgan’s stupidity.” "

mothballed 1y ago
Not to justify it, but why isn't the founder of UPS (edit: Fedex) in prison? I don't think it was legal to go and literally spend their money at the casino. If you turn a profit no one cares (unless you're Shkreli, don't think his investors lost money, but he pissed off some politicians because he said the quiet parts out loud about how the pharma industry works), if you lose it's fraud. When all the winners are doing it, hard to compete otherwise... not that it makes it right.
- privatelypublic 1y ago
  What are you thinking the crime would be? He bet his company on a literal toss of the dice instead of the routine figurative ones. Outside of Bribery and ?SarBox? (Whichever regulation handles kickbacks, etc), I can't think of anything.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    If you spend investor money at a literal casino while advertising a non-casino related business, and pay the investors back, probably people will view you as not committing a crime. If you get investor money or get a loan on the basis of funding logistics investments, bet it on roulette red, and go bankrupt, I would expect you'd be looking at hard jail time for fraud. So I'm thinking the crime would be nothing, because he was a winner, and the optics totally changed, and fraud relies on very subjective opinions of a jury.
    - bryanlarsen 1y ago
      There are lots of examples of people going to jail despite investors getting their money back, like SBF and Shkreli. Even Madoff investors got 94% of their investments back.
      - mothballed 1y ago
        Shkreli is the only one of those 3 that fully paid back his investors, and it took him pissing off virtually every politician and a bunch of wealthy insurance executives/administrators to get enough resources mobilized to get a conviction (and being one of the most uncharismatic people on earth, which didn't help him at trial). I think you are definitely in a much worse place for a fraud conviction if you lose money.
        bryanlarsen 1y ago
        News stories said SBF investors were going to get 118% of their money back. Did that not happen? https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/08/ftx-crypto-fraud-victims-to-get-their-money-back-plus-interest/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/08/ftx-crypto-fraud-victims-t...
        mothballed 1y ago
        No because the assets ('money') deposited to SBF were crypto, and you just gamified it by doing a currency exchange to USD while disingenuously failing to note that in that time the USD value of the crypto went up. If you want an accurate reflection, note how much of the crypto deposited went in, and then how much came back out after SBF lost it. This would be like me depositing USD, someone stealing some of it, then you bragging the value went up because I have a larger quantity as measured in Venezuelan Bolivars. What actually happened is their % they recouped was less than 100 until you artificially change to an entirely different currency.
        bryanlarsen 1y ago
        Sure, if you believe crypto is a currency.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- potato3732842 1y ago
  > (unless you're Shkreli, don't think his investors lost money, but he pissed off some politicians because he said the quiet parts out loud about how the pharma industry works) What's the TL;DR? His wikipedia page doesn't make it obvious.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    Shkreli's schtick was to buy out or control pharma companies that had a monopoly and jack the everliving fuck out of the prices. He had some programs for uninsured people, but he would milk the insurance companies absolutely dry, which gave him some wild profits. This made a bunch of powerful people absolutely enraged, as he was basically publicly bragging about jacking the ever living fuck out of the prices. Pharma companies do this but Shkreli would publicly say it and tell the truth that basically the other companies were doing it while pretending to be good people, and he was only being honest about it. Poor people were pissed because they were told they couldn't get their drugs (I'm unaware if the program that allowed uninsured people to get them for cheap was real or not), and the rich insurance people pissed because he was basically he was bilking them. So they went back and discovered one or some of his other early enterprises weren't profitable, but that he had used money he made off his later pharma enterprises to pay back his earlier investors. In trial, his investors testified they were happy with the situation, lost no money, and would invest with him again. But they still convicted him for fraud, even despite the 'victims' themselves did not believe they were defrauded. It didn't help that Shkreli is probably one of the most profoundly unlikeable people you can possible listen to, unless you're not bothered to hear a hyper-capitalist be honest about how they do business.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      Sounds like basically the big boy version of how all the other psychiatrists who run plausibly deniable pill mills will screech about the one running a flagrant pill mill until they lose their license.
    - notmyjob 1y ago
      Victims not wanting prosecution doesn’t absolve the perpetrator as wife beaters learn all the time. I also think Skhreli’s biggest mistake was threatening Hillary Clinton.
- 1123581321 1y ago
  There is truth to this. She was exposed because JP Morgan ran a marketing campaign that converted extremely poorly. Better purchased data might've prevented significant forensics. The poor due diligence had already been signed off. While she committed fraud, I feel sorry for her because of her naivety. It must've been a sick moment when they asked to examine the data during due diligence. If she'd known that would be used for marketing integration so quickly, maybe she would have backed out of the deal.
  - miltonlost 1y ago
    From the complaint: > In particular, CC-1 and JAVICE asked Engineer-1 to supplement a list of Frank’s website visitors with additional data fields containing synthetic data. > Engineer-1 was uncomfortable with the request and stated, in sum and substance, “I don’t want to do anything illegal.” JAVICE and CC-1 claimed to Engineer-1 that it was legal. JAVICE stated to Engineer-1, in sum and substance, “We don’t want to end up in orange jumpsuits.” Engineer-1 declined the request from JAVICE and CC-1. She's not naive. She was told this was illegal and then did it still. She knew this was fraud.
    - 1123581321 1y ago
      Yes, read the same. Naive in thinking she could get past that and they wouldn’t do anything particularly revealing with the data. A smarter fraudster would’ve backed out earlier with less damage.
  - IncreasePosts 1y ago
    She's so naive, she just hung around until someone found out the fraud. It made me wonder what she was thinking when her $30M share landed in her bank account. "Whee, I got away with it", "it's their problem now"? I don't think I would commit fraud, but if I did it for that amount, I would be on a flight to Malaysia or some other place with no extradition with the US!
- curiousObject 1y ago
  why isn't the founder of UPS in prison? I don't think it was legal to go and literally spend their money at the casino That was FedEx’s founder, Fred Smith. It wasn’t UPS He only had $5,000 of funds remaining, which he gambled playing blackjack, so the potential loss to investors was small. He’d already lost almost all their investments through operating FeDex
  - FireBeyond 1y ago
    The investors? At that point he had been stiffing his pilots on wages for weeks or months, and with many also paying fuel bills on their personal credit cards/checks, since many fuelers had canceled FedEx's accounts. Yeah, $5K isn't a whole lot, but if I'm a pilot struggling to put food on my family's table, and the CEO takes company money to Vegas, I'm not thinking "Oh, but the investors" or "Sure, it's not that much money anyway". I don't see why people (not saying you, in particular) see this as some heroic founder "risking it all". He wasn't. He was risking the company's "all", after asking the employees to suck up his mismanagement.
    - curiousObject 1y ago
      some heroic founder "risking it all". He wasn't. He was risking the company's "all", after asking the employees to suck up his mismanagement. I agree. He was asking employees not to cash their paychecks sometimes. $5000 is inconsequential compared to that forced investment from employees and business partners
    - red_rech 1y ago
      [dead]
- IncreasePosts 1y ago
  There's no knowledge as to whether he used company money, or personal cash/line of credit. In fact, there's no knowledge of the story is even true, apart from what one dead man wrote!

troyvit 1y ago

I was about to go on a rant about, "Why is it ethical to put people in jail for doing things that only affect money? Was anybody at JPMorgan hurt as bad as jail will hurt this person?" But you already answered the question.

fourseventy 1y ago
If I steal all your money I shouldn't go to jail?
- troyvit 1y ago
  I personally believe money crimes should have money punishments and corporal crimes could have corporal punishments. If you steal from me and go to jail how did I benefit? If you steal from me and I get a bunch of $ for pain and suffering and you get your pay docked for n years that seems good.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

taytus 1y ago

same as Theranos

arbuge 1y ago

She

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

> He broke an unwritten, cardinal rule, which is to never steal from the rich. "She". The name is "Charlie," but it's a young woman. And, like another young woman, she stole from the rich, and got jailed. She'll probably get a federal minimum-security prison (no fences and a golf course). They aren't quite "Camp Cupcake," but they are a far cry from places like Leavenworth (I've known folks that have done time in both).

Aurornis 1y ago

Believe it or not, smaller fraudsters get prosecuted all the time, too. One of the news reporters I followed on Twitter in my area liked to follow all of the small cases of real estate and business fraud in my area. There were a lot of prosecutions for people who were stealing <$10K at a time through affinity fraud and fake business investments. You just don't hear about them as much because someone going to jail for stealing $60K from a couple families from their church in a fake real estate scheme isn't as exciting as a massive fraud against JP Morgan.

HankStallone 1y ago
A few years ago the manager of our local Menards got convicted of stealing over a half-million dollars over 5 years. She only got 180 days, too, and was allowed to leave the jail for work. Depending on how high on the hog she lived for those five years, she might figure it was worth it. I knew one local HVAC company where the office manager skimmed off six figures over something like 20 years before she got caught. Just slow and steady, never taking enough to be obvious, I guess. It happens more than people would think.
- wil421 1y ago
  I knew a guy whose parents basically invented thrift stores. He’s accountant did the same thing while he was battling drug addiction. Not sure if she ever got prosecuted I think the owner wanted to move on. Then he died of a heart attack.

rdtsc 1y ago

> He broke an unwritten, cardinal rule, which is to never steal from the rich. Right from the article > Addressing the court before she was sentenced, Javice, "she was" ... The title even: > Charlie Javice sentenced to seven years in prison for fraudulent sale of her startup "her startup" ... Kind of curious, how did you determine their gender? Guessing, saw the title on HN only without clicking on the link assumed it must be a "him"?