Jury Finds Autonomy Founder Mike Lynch Not Guilty of Defrauding HP (bbc.co.uk) 28
The BBC reports that British tech tycoon Mike Lynch "has been cleared of fraud charges he faced in the U.S. over the $11bn (£8.6bn) sale of his software firm to Hewlett-Packard in 2011."
A jury in San Francisco found him not guilty on all counts in a stunning victory for Mr Lynch, who had been accused of inflating the value of Autonomy, his company, ahead of its sale. Mr Lynch, who faced more than 20 years in prison if convicted, had denied the charges and took the stand to defend himself.
In his testimony, he maintained he had focused on technology not accounting, distancing himself from other executives, including the company's former chief financial officer who was already successfully prosecuted for fraud... Mr Lynch made £500m from the sale. Just a year later, HP wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8bn. Years of legal battles followed. The company's chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, was found guilty of fraud in 2018 and later sentenced to five years in prison...
Mr Lynch's team pushed the argument that HP had failed to properly vet the deal and mismanaged the takeover, while he testified he was uninvolved with the transactions being described.
Lynch's lawyers said the verdict "closes the book on a relentless 13-year effort to pin HP's well-documented ineptitude on Dr Lynch. Thankfully, the truth has finally prevailed."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.
In his testimony, he maintained he had focused on technology not accounting, distancing himself from other executives, including the company's former chief financial officer who was already successfully prosecuted for fraud... Mr Lynch made £500m from the sale. Just a year later, HP wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8bn. Years of legal battles followed. The company's chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, was found guilty of fraud in 2018 and later sentenced to five years in prison...
Mr Lynch's team pushed the argument that HP had failed to properly vet the deal and mismanaged the takeover, while he testified he was uninvolved with the transactions being described.
Lynch's lawyers said the verdict "closes the book on a relentless 13-year effort to pin HP's well-documented ineptitude on Dr Lynch. Thankfully, the truth has finally prevailed."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.
of course it was the CFO acting alone (Score:4, Interesting)
This is some kind of Trump argument... I'm a very smart person but I was blind to this massive fraud happening around me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Odd how so many of Trump's cabinet now have criminal charges. Everyone from his campaign manager to his lawyer. Meanwhile all republicans can do is take away Hunter Biden's second amendment rights.
Re: (Score:3)
treasonous theft of the 2020 election.
Hahahahahahaha hahahahaha
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
Stop. Just... stop! I'm going to burst something. Comedy like this should be charged for. Not thrown away for free on the interwebs!
Re: of course it was the CFO acting alone (Score:4, Informative)
Don't confuse being smart with being ruthless.
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It's called being rich enough to delay cases indefinitely.
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TDS? I don't think we need to bring in the ability to believe the former alleged president tells the truth. As one dismissed perspective juror in his latest fraud trial put it, I wouldn't believe him even if he had it tongue notarized.
Karma? (Score:5, Insightful)
After all of the nonsense that HP has put upon it's home printer customers it's a joy to see HP take a ~$3bn loss! This must be what "schadenfreude" really feels like!
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As a an owner(20 years ago) of an HP printer - I can attest that $3BN probably doesn't compensate for the suffering caused by using their website to get drivers etc - never mind the printers themselves and the attendant BS.
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Amen! HP printed greed. Bassturds!
Jury of his peers? (Score:2)
This is a tough one... (Score:2)
...whom do you summarily convict without a trial in the public eye? The billionaire or HP?
There's always a chance a billionaire is still a human being while there is no chance that HP has any kind of morals or competence...
Re: This is a tough one... (Score:5, Insightful)
HP lost its way somewhere during the 90's when they went from being a tech company to a profit maximization company.
I was at HP in BÃblingen the day it was announced that they were breaking out what would become Agilent and now Keysight.
Re: This is a tough one... (Score:5, Insightful)
HP went into steady decline when Carly Fiorina became CEO of the company. She divided and conquered the company and diluted its management with Compaq people. That was the beginning of the end of HP. HP's Board of Directors is solely to blame for hiring a string of "loot and scoot" CEOs.
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Oh yeah, I remember. First ever retrenchment happened in HP when she was around.
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HP lost its way somewhere during the 90's when they went from being a tech company to a profit maximization company. I was at HP in BÃblingen the day it was announced that they were breaking out what would become Agilent and now Keysight.
HP lost its way when it stopped being an engineering company that made stuff. I still have a functioning HP 32S from the '80's that still works perfectly even though one of the corners was chewed up by a dog. I want to buy things like that, not printer ink.
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They both suck. Lynch is a scumbag and almost certainly a crook (an opinion I had when he was still running Autonomy, before HP was interested). HP are completely incompetent and should not be protected from that incompetence. Lynch should have never faced extradition. This is just part of the special relationship where alleged crimes committed in the UK which might not even BE crimes in the UK can get you extradited to America just because an American is involved.
Of course it's complete bullshit that the C
The scam is so huge.. that it is hard to believe.. (Score:3)
For me it smells like both sides colluded on it...
It is hard to believe that neither Lynch nor HP managers were not aware that this is a multi-billion scam...
Unless they are are very, very highly incompetent...
Re:The scam is so huge.. that it is hard to believ (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, HP 's management were so desperate to buy Autonomy that they did not do the proper due diligence.
HP's CEO was kicked out shortly after the deal went down.
Re:The scam is so huge.. that it is hard to believ (Score:5, Insightful)
The only real area of uncertainty, which Lynch seems to have gotten a favorable interpretation on, was whether Lynch was the good Dr. Lynch, brilliant techie naïve and uninvolved in the sordid matters of corporate accounting; or whether he was the CEO, and apparently not a dedicated R&D nerd when it came to founding multiple companies and running a venture capital firm; so...unlikely...to have been as ignorant as he let on.
I have my doubts, his career certainly doesn't look like the trajectory of someone who's only in it for the tech and doesn't touch the corpo spreadsheet jockey stuff(unless he has been essentially a trophy figurehead intended to lend technical weight to a whole string of companies and is only ceremonially involved in management); but apparently they jury was sympathetic to the former interpretation.
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For me it smells like both sides colluded on it...
HP defrauded for millions. In this case there really were good people on both sides.
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For me it smells like both sides colluded on it...
What possible reason would HP have to collude in getting scammed?
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Not HP as a whole...
individuals that have impact on the decision could share the spoils...