
Theranos Criminal Case Is Broader Than Publicly Disclosed, Prosecutors Say - propman
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-12/theranos-criminal-case-is-broader-than-disclosed-u-s-says?srnd=premium
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samfisher83
Why aren't Holmes and the other guy in jail. I mean there are people in jail
for smoking pot and these guys did massive fraud and they are free.

I hope they don't just give them some fine. Makes the judicial system look
bad.

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tptacek
Pretty obviously because a pot charge is typically simple to adjudicate (you
were arrested, you had pot, that's illegal) and white-collar investor and
product fraud cases are not. The criminal case against Balwani and Holmes is
complicated, and it will take time to resolve.

(Relatively few people are at this point in jail for smoking pot, for whatever
that's worth to you).

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DSingularity
I don’t know how I feel about this. At some point this just seems like BS, a
rigged system where the crimes of the rich and white are “too complicated to
prosecute” while the crimes of the poor and the minorities are so simple and
easy.

Please. One day this system will collapse on itself.

~~~
volkl48
The rich can afford expensive lawyers who require an airtight case to
prosecute successfully. They also violate the law in much more convoluted
schemes that require a lot of work to be able to piece together a case that a
jury will understand and believe.

The poor have a shitty public defender who advises them to plead guilty even
if they aren't, and if they committed a crime it's likely something simple and
straightforward to explain and prove.

~~~
HarryHirsch
It's worse than that. I'm currently waiting for my former landlord to return
the security deposit. The law insists that it be returned within a certain
time with an accounting, otherwise there are punitive damages; the punitive
damages serve to encourage the landlord to be honest in his dealings.

The clock has run out, but my lawyer advises against against asking for
damages. Looking at the law, it should be a slam-dunk deal, but apparently the
district judge is sufficiently corrupt not to be trusted.

It's not my job to school the landlord to be honest, and since there are no
consequences for bad behaviour they will be dishonest and will continue to
cheat students and other out-of-towners out of what is rightfully theirs.
_That_ , friends, is the reality in the US: groups of the population have good
reason to believe that the legal system is not working for them.

Recently, a political TV program commented on the Brazilian election - on one
side is a fascist, on the other a representative of party so corrupt that it's
unelectable. The situation is approaching a civil war. In the US it's not
quite as bad as in Brazil, but it's getting there.

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tptacek
I think your lawyer is not good at their job. It's likely if you took your
landlord to court, it'd take 12-18 months (during which you'd do nothing and
incur minimal expenses waiting on the court calendar), and then, before you
got to trial, your landlord would offer to settle for 50%.

The case itself, hit or miss, but 50% > 0%.

My big lesson from taking landlords to court is that the security deposit is a
negotiation.

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HarryHirsch
No, the law is not good at its job. This is in a small college town, it's a
large property administration company that looks after ~ 100 investment
properties. From what I hear, they habitually do not return the deposit. This
shouldn't happen.

How much are you willing to bet? The demand letter is in the mail, if the
money doesn't show up next Friday the matter will end up at the qadi's.

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tptacek
_All landlords habitually don 't return deposits_. I have rented cheap
apartments and expensive apartments and houses and vacation rentals, in
college towns (Ann Arbor) and all over Chicago and San Francisco --- all
places with good tenants unions. In SF, I paid up front my whole year's rent.
I have never, ever had a landlord return a security deposit. Not once.

Landlords expect you to come at them for the deposit. If you don't, it's a
13th month rent. The serious renters just treat the deposit as their 12th
month rent, but if you didn't do that, or care about your reference, you sue
for it.

IANAL let alone your L, but at this point, in my 42nd year of life, if I don't
get my security deposit back, I drop a buck fifty and put a suit in process,
fully expecting the landlord to whine at me and then start the actual
negotiation.

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runako
Wait is this really a thing?

I've rented in 5 cities across the US. I have never once had to even ask for
my security deposit to be returned. It's just assumed that I would get it
back, and I do.

In the cities where I've lived, I've never heard of anyone _not_ getting their
security deposit back. I honestly had no idea we were so lucky!

~~~
tptacek
It is really a thing. You've been super lucky. After my first apartment, we
started hiring cleaning services to do a pre-move-out clean, which, in
retrospect, was pretty stupid, because the condition of the apartment's got
nothing to do with anything.

~~~
rleigh
It is in most of the UK rental agreements I've had. If they have to hire a
cleaning service to clean it up, they recover the cost from your deposit.
You're supposed to leave it in the good condition it was when you moved in.

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tptacek
Sorry, I can't speak to the UK, just the US.

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walrus01
After seeing how few senior financial industry people went to prison for their
work that directly caused the 2007-2009 economic crisis, I'm highly skeptical
that justice will actually be served.

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rayiner
I'd love to hear which specific person did which specific thing that you
believe " _directly caused_ the 2007-2009 economic crisis."

Identifying a "direct cause" of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, with certainty
exceeding 90-95% (the "reasonable doubt" threshold) would be worthy of a Nobel
Memorial Prize, in my estimation.

~~~
walrus01
a) the people who paid off the bond rating agencies to rate mortgage-backed
securities full of junk mortgages as AAA.

b) the senior executives at institutions like bear stearns who signed off on
creating the mortgage backed securities and their known composition of shit
mortgages.

c) the senior executives at the rating agencies who knowingly rated shit bonds
as AAA.

d) senior executives at institutions like Countrywide which pumped the shit
mortgages into the market.

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rayiner
And you’re 95% certain that bond ratings are what caused the financial crisis?

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paulsutter
So tell us then what it was? Good people doing solid work until they were hit
by a random black swan event? That’s the official story and it’s absurd.

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kbenson
I think the implication is that there were multiple causes from multiple
sides, all to varying degrees of culpability.

In other words, bond ratings may not be _the_ cause, but still be _a_ cause.

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readhn
How many startup CEOs with "fake it until you make it" philosophy are sweating
a bit more these days??

~~~
kleopullin
How many of them sold fake blood tests to real patients? I think fraud is one
thing, putting up a successful facade is not quite fraud.

~~~
readhn
FYI: these were not "fake blood tests"!

They used central lab with conventional test equipment to consolidate and
process patient samples (not their magic lab on the bench device) and issue
the results. The problem was that their central lab(s) was run poorly
(multiple violations) so the results were questioned. (Similar to lets say a
bread factory making bread, then the inspector comes in and finds out that
certain fridges used for yeast storage were out of spec by 5 degrees, no batch
log files etc. and shuts down the factory. The bread that was produced at such
factory was definitely not "fake").

I believe its a case of completely incompetent leadership that ultimately
snowballed into MUCH bigger issues (what else to expect from a 19 year old
girl with no experience running a company in one of the hardest/most
complicated and most heavily regulated industries?)!

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chmaynard
This Silicon Valley morality tale still has life! It's time for the WSJ to get
John Carreyrou back on the story.

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kleopullin
What IP are they protecting? I think the problem is there was no IP. Ever.

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dmfdmf
I am not a lawyer but can't/shouldn't the defense request a dismissal at this
point if the prosecutor just admitted it is an on-going investigation? It
seems a bit unfair to continue with the case while using the fact that it is
an open investigation as a cover to collect more evidence against them. It is
unfair because the lawyers for the defense are trying to defend against a
moving target.

NB: Not defending Holmes or Balwani but curious about the legal status of the
case.

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tptacek
Don't superseding indictments happen all the time in criminal cases?

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dmfdmf
I don't know, not a lawyer. It maybe normal procedure but seems a bit unfair.

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tptacek
Why would that be unfair?

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stevev
I believe you are guilty, but I don’t have any sufficient evidence(s) yet.

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tptacek
That's not how a superseding indictment works! A superseding indictment
charges _more_ (or different) crimes than the original indictment. The process
for obtaining the indictments in the first place is the same.

