
Fraud charges against HashRocket executives dropped - henning
http://jacksonville.com/business/2010-08-06/story/government-seeks-dismiss-mail-fraud-charges
======
extrafresh
While clearly not a criminal act, the act of sending scammy fake invoices is
classless and shows the morals of the individuals involved.

To be in any way affiliated with swindling $29m in this manner is rather low
and humiliating.

~~~
Confusion
Why does everyone seem to assume/know that these guys actually did send fake
invoices? I've not seen any evidence for that.

~~~
ewjordan
Because we saw pictures of their "advertisements", and they were quite
obviously designed to trick people into thinking they were invoices, or at the
_very_ least make them think they wouldn't be listed in the real Yellow Pages
without paying the fee - only the fine print indicated otherwise. The link
posted in that original thread had a picture of one of them, and should be at
[http://avramc.posterous.com/united-directories-federal-
court...](http://avramc.posterous.com/united-directories-federal-court-
indictment-d#), though Posterous appears to be out of commission at the moment
so I can't check...

Edit: from a later post on this topic, a working link to the image:
[http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-
images/hn/disreputa...](http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-
images/hn/disreputable-things.png)

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gojomo
This update deserves as much attention as the initial report:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1482497> (114 points)

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mmelin
Looks like the $425 million figure was wrong (probably due to it being a sweep
account as mentioned in the previous thread). How could such a basic mistake
be made? According to this article, the business had $50 million in revenue
the past 10 years, with $21 million in postage costs alone.

~~~
hga
The prosecutor didn't know what a sweep account was according to reports from
the initial bail hearing: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1482497>.

You might be surprised at how totally incompetent prosecutions can be at
times, especially those that aren't motivated by a real desire to get bad
guys.

E.g. Reagan's NASA administrator (removed from his position before the
Challenger disaster). This was WRT to the version of the DIVAD that actually
worked, the problem was that the contract was a hybrid cost plus/fixed cost
beast. The prosecution team had to admit they didn't have _anyone_ on their
team with experience in federal contracts (!!!).

For some strange reason the judge wouldn't let them move dismiss the case
without prejudice (i.e. with prejudice means they can't give the case another
try later, it's over for all time).

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hga
" _They had been accused in the complaint, but the case had not gone to a
grand jury nor had they been indicted_ "

Yow. How could the Feds even get this far without observing that minor detail
required in beginning of the Fifth Amendment???

And giving up (hopefully this is a dismissal with prejudice), let alone so
soon is ... very uncharacteristic of the Justice Department. Just what
happened here?

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jshen
great, they were legally scamming people :/

~~~
jrockway
We can't rely on the legal system to protect us from _everything_. At best,
the system can only react and keep us from making the same mistake twice,

To anticipate and respond to new threats and get the reaction right the first
time, we need some sort of highly creative and autonomous decision engine that
can quickly make decisions from the perspective of an individual.

That would be you.

~~~
jshen
I think the legal system should deal with fraud where someone makes it appear
that they are someone else. Individuals can't exhaustively research every
little thing they do, that would lead to the most inefficient society
imaginable.

This isn't a computer system, so there are other options than anticipating and
responding. For one, there can be a deterrent if the penalty is large enough
to overcome the possible upside of getting away with it.

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shadchnev
I'm really happy this happened. Hashrocket are a bunch of great people running
a great company and they went through a lot in the past few weeks.
Unfortunately, though all charges are dropped, some damage to the reputation
is inevitable.

~~~
patio11
Some damage to one's reputation is an occupational hazard of doing
disreputable things.

[http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-
images/hn/disreputa...](http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-
images/hn/disreputable-things.png)

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rdl
I feel pretty bad about assuming there was truth to this, initially.

