$TSLA made enough people rich I suppose. I saw some gains myself although not on a large scale. Still don’t like the guy but there’s the old adage “for my friends everything, for my enemies the law”.
If $TSLA plummets a crazy amount the tables may turn
> Still don’t like the guy but there’s the old adage
Interestingly, Juan Domingo Peron's version of that adage was "For our friends, everything. For our enemies, not even justice." I'm not sure which one is worse, but they are certainly both evocative.
> If $TSLA plummets a crazy amount the tables may turn
It depends. What happened here is that Holmes screwed over peers, and not just consumers. I don't think anything will happen to $TSLA's CEO unless except through malice aimed at his peers that affects their wealth.
I think this is a Theranos reference that went over everyone's heads. Theranos were using Siemens machines while pretending to use their own technology. Obviously Tesla is not doing anything like this, and GP's point is that they are not similar.
Given Tesla were the first to use a "Giga Press" [1] to mould the chassis, I very much doubt your claim. They innovated significantly. Most car manufacturers use Bosch components all over the place, if that's what you're getting at.
There are at least four replies at this moment missing the point entirely, it's incredible how knee-jerk these are to defend Tesla against a defense of Tesla.
Honestly, a lot of the anti-Tesla and anti-Musk arguments I've seen people post on-line, including here on HN, are like that comment, except in earnest. I'm not surprised so many people "missed the point" when your average Tesla/Musk thread on the Internet still has people posting blatant lies and trivially fact-checkable bullshit stories, like e.g. that apartheid emerald mine thing, and that's regardless of how cultured or enlightened the venue claims to be.
If the point is so opaque that four separate comments miss it, then maybe it was not well described in the first place.
It’s less a knee-jerk defense of Tesla and more of a knee-jerk “what are you talking about that’s absurd” because at face value it’s an exceptionally absurd claim.
I mean, that doesn’t change how it’s a confusing and seemingly absurd claim at face value.
It doesn’t read like a joke, it doesn’t in any way imply the link, it just sounds like an absurd statement put out to incite responses. And people clearly all read it this way. If one person read it wrong then sure, you might have a point. If every single person replying read it this way, then it just shows the point was not clearly articulated to begin with.
Even if you had just watched the documentaries about Theranos, I doubt you could have immediately pieced that connection on first read.
I'm well acquainted with the Theranos story and still had no idea what the VW comment meant until I read the replies. It's a pretty tenuous joke, and given the other responses I'm clearly not the only one who thought so.
Being aghast at people for misunderstanding is silly.
Yeah, I hate saying stuff like "it only matters when it hits the pockets of the rich" because it's reductive and cynical, but seriously - how are the patients not better protected here? How is that not the bigger story?
It's because she didn't directly lie to any patients, she was insulated from all of that. They got her on lying to investors because those are the kind of people she was actually talking to.
I don't know this area, but I suspect the regulatory framework around this needs revision so that government could discover that kind of malice, i.e. if there were some requirement of regular reporting that would have created the paper trail.
I imagine there is something in the paperwork you sign when you pay for it that basically says roughly "this may never actually materialize" and that's the key difference.
>Marques Brownlee has a video from last year where it drove him to his studio.
I don't know where to start with this if you think that one, year-old video is somehow proof that Tesla FSD is ready for use--and, say, the recall earlier this year isn't indication that maybe it's not.
wrong. watch the latest FSD videos. FSD has proved all the detractors wrong. it drives unbelievably well. and the rate of improvement is astounding. this comment might have been valid a few years ago but not anymore.
I'm an FSD Beta user. If you stop reading at "Full Self Driving Capability", then yes, it's an issue for a potential purchaser. But if you read just a little bit more, it becomes more clear what you're buying. I don't feel "fooled" and neither do 1000s of other Beta testers with whom I regularly communicate on Discord.
Don't think this is the point. Calling something Oranges, and then saying "they're not really oranges, but an approximation, but we call them oranges bc it sounds cool" is still fraudulent in my view.
Because the more detailed description of the feature clearly explains what it does and doesn’t do. Say you sign a contract, one section is titled “Seller Assumes Liability for Injury” but then the text of that section lists some circumstances where they don’t. Totally fine and legal.
Maybe, if all that is within the four corners of the contract. I don’t think that’s what we are talking about here; our current discussion seems to involve the marketing name of a car feature (full self driving) and the technical functionality that name represents.
With that in mind it seems that you are not thinking about the Rst. 2d Torts 540 duty to investigate rule. I can be justified in relying on something (e.g., your intentionally misleading name for the feature) even if an investigation would have shown the misrepresentation was false. Instead of “totally fine and legal” I would say that this is “a fact-dependent situation.”
Do you believe that selling something called Full Self Driving that actually could not drive itself fully is within the duty of good faith and fair dealing? This sidesteps the issue of the tort of fraudulent misrepresentation and goes right to the heart of the customer confusion a product like a Tesla sows.
Yes, good faith and fair dealing has nothing to do with this and shows that while you may know enough to pull out the restatement, you don’t really get the law. Good faith has to do with conduct in the execution of an agreement that undermines the deal without seeming to technically violate it. It doesn’t have anything to do with putting caveats in fine print.
False, of course; a bait and switch contract is a violation of the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing. The conduct of delivering something that is not what you advertised fulfills the elements.
If you want to sit here and tell me that the contract actually says the car can't drive itself, that's fine but my hypothetical had nothing to do with a caveat in fine print. I suggest before you make a personal attack, you do your best to read the regular-sized print that I delivered to you. The website which you are using this twenty-hour old account to troll has some rules, too, and you would do better to study those rather than to try to contradict me.
It’s very clear when you buy a Tesla that the car does not completely drive itself without human supervision. It’s part of the agreement, and the use of FSD as the marketing name of the feature doesn’t change that.
>The conduct of delivering something that is not what you advertised fulfills the elements.
The issue is what was promised. The promise is not just the title of the feature, but all of the information presented to you when you buy a Tesla.
And I’ll contradict you all day if I want because you’re not just wrong, but clearly suffering from Elon Derangement Syndrome.
You’re clearly not a lawyer even if you role play one online.
I’m not totally defending Tesla’s mildly misleading advertising here. I’m saying it’s not fraud and not really comparable to the massive fraud committed by Holmes.
> I'm an FSD Beta user... 1000s of other Beta testers
Ah, so the hundreds of thousands or millions who bought FSD years ago should be happy that a few thousand of you get to test out a system with your own lives. Great.
Edit: Don't bother responding if you're a Tesla or Elon fanboy/fangirl. I'm not interested in being insulted any longer by you folks.
There are 400,000+ Beta users currently (US and Canada). You are being fooled by the headlines. The people in the EU have a legitimate beef (not being able to use the functionality). "test a system with our own lives" is silly hyperbole and you know it.
> "test a system with our own lives" is silly hyperbole and you know it.
No, I actually believe that, because I have some morals and ethics around introducing dangerous and untested black-box AI into a several-ton machine with no physical consrtaints as to it's location (aka: a moving car), as in I wouldn't do it myself nor use a product like Tesla that was developed in such a shoddy manner.
It's pretty fucking rude to assume you know what's in my head, and I wish I could insult you as hard as you insulted me with that statement, but that would just be tit for tat and HN isn't about that kind of insulting remark.
It's ADAS Level 2. Tesla is one of many. And are you equally concerned aboout parents who allow their 15 and 16 year olds to drive on the same streets with no-to-little training... and where the parent cannot easily grab the steering wheel or press the brake?
15 and 16 year olds, in many states, are required to drive with a fully-licensed individual until they are 18 or even older! I'm not as worried about a teenage driver, though, because they are humans and we have a lot of experience as humans on how to teach other humans to drive. Not so much with a black-box neural net AI!
Thanks. In the future, try to be charitable and assume people are telling their true feelings on HN, and not being trolls or dickheads. Most people here are pretty good about that, I find.
so when they introduced drive by wire, and just put it out there on the roads without telling anyone, that was reckless? or any of the countless other designs that have led us to the modern cars we have now? how about all the severe recalls, not over the air recalls that tesla gets press for but real safety issues? GM and the others have tons and tons of real physical safety recalls, way more than tesla, and thats not shoddy to you? thats not reckless to you? thats foolish. fsd as it is now probably drives more safely than a teenager. so do you want to take all teenagers off the road? and where is your crusade against drunk driving which kills way, way more people than fsd ever will every single year. doesnt bother you. no, your issue isnt with safety or with ethics or principles or anything like that. your issue is with elon musk. because you read brain-rot mainstream media all day who use lies and misdirection to paint elon musk and tesla as evil.
Well, drive by wire wasn't just put out there, it was tested on military jets for decades and the tech eventually got to cars. There are also testing rigs and failsafes for such designs, however Tesla is just putting a black-box AI on the roads in charge of massive vehicles.
I'm not going to engage with someone like you any longer, though, as you're being really fucking rude.
no, youre not going to engage because you know youre wrong. high volume drive by wire is way different than millions of dollars jet fly by wire systems. and it doesnt matter anyway because it was one of countless systems that were tested on the road. hydraulic brakes. for a long time half the industry wouldnt trust them because it was too out-there. and yes, these systems are developed and tested in house and safety measures are put in place, all true with fsd i should add, but putting them out there on real roads in thousands or millions of vehicles is not something you can ever test for. the simple and plain fact is that when you deploy these kinds of system updates at scale, there is risk. so far, fsd has proven a lot less risky than other systems deployed by other auto manufacturers because there have been many recalls and many deaths associated with systems that did not pass the at-scale test and none of those are fsd related. there are some articles that try to attribute a crash or fatality to a malfunction of fsd but none of them have panned out. its bullshit. and even if they were all true, it would still probably not be the most dangerous system thats been deployed at scale in recent times. but its not true...
ABUSING YOUR FLAGGING PRIVS IS RUDE, DISHONEST AND SHAMEFUL. A PERSON AS OLD AS YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER
"test a system with our own lives" is actually an understatement; FSD Beta is being tested on other peoples' lives without their consent. Other drivers, pedestrians, etc.
so when you have a student driver, or a new driver, the lives of not just them but the people around them are being risked just to test a system. so we should just stop all new drivers. no more new drivers. because a new driver, especially a teenage one, is orders of magnitude more dangerous than the current fsd.
Student drivers are typically subject to significant limitations - no other kids in car, no driving past certain hours, parental supervision for a certain period of time, etc. They're not learning for a billionaire's profit, and they're fairly unlikely to get a software update that causes a whole bunch of them to make the same mistake in a short period of time.
so where is your proposal to limit the passengers of a self driving car, all of the countless brands who are advertising level 2 systems? where is your proposal for compromise? there are none because nobody who likes pouring cold water on tesla is coming from a place of intellectual honesty.
so self driving cars could only exist for a billionaires profit? how about for the countless lives that will be saved by this technology? tens of thousands of people die every year. cmon dude.
I'd like to see safety-critical beta software in cars undergo independent audits prior to widespread release. (My dream would be for it to be open source, but that's probably unrealistic.)
I'd like to see formalized safety testing processes of such software at the regulatory level, similar to how crash testing is currently conducted.
I'm sure others have specific, useful suggestions.
> there are none because nobody who likes pouring cold water on tesla is coming from a place of intellectual honesty.
This, ironically, doesn't sound like it comes from a place of intellectual honesty.
> how about for the countless lives that will be saved by this technology?
these compromises are productive and show that you do come from a place of intellectual honesty.
if the federal government had been tasked with overseeing the early versions of fsd, it would have been swiftly shut down because of the nature of the federal government, not to mention the politics. but thanks to the private sector we now have modern fsd which is bar none the most advanced and capable self-driving solution in the world. now that self driving has gotten this far, its probably much less likely to be aborted if subjected to government intervention and oversight. in light of the huge benefits that self-driving cars stand to create, measured in human lives, compromise is the only rational proposal. shutting down fsd like mouth-breathing internet commenters talk about would be objectively wrong given the state of its competitors and the nature of the problem.
edit: your bio says 'fuck elon musk.' making a two dimensional character out of elon musk isnt a good way to understand him or his projects. when the time comes and elon musk uses his influence and money to do something really bad, it might be boy crys wolf thanks to your camp.
My Twitter bio does. Added shortly after he banned links to Mastodon, broke Tweetbot (and lied about them breaking the rules), and announced breaking changes to the Twitter APIs I use extensively at work with a few days warning.
you seem passionate and knowlegable about this so i will ask you. i want to know more about the API changes. detractors say that it was at best an irresponsible change to the API that inconvenienced companies that use it. proponents say that musk simply stopped making the API free which was always unsustainable and people should have known better. what was really going on?
Entire businesses had their products cease to function, with no warning, and no explanation from Twitter, until a couple of days later they got vaguely libeled by Twitter's developer account. (https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1615405842735714304)
Absolute clown show. If they'd said "in 90 days we're shutting down third-party clients and implementing a paid tier", people would've grumbled but seen it as fairly reasonable. Kneecapping devs who've been building Twitter apps and integrations for a decade was cruel and unnecessary.
I 100% agree with you that we should have regulators auditing and verifying safety information for autonomous systems.
But I'd like to point out that the link you included is out-of-date. Tesla has continued to publish their autopilot safety numbers in their quarterly slide decks. Here is Q3 2022 for example, see page 10: https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/SVCPTV_2022_Q4_Quarterly_...
Miles between accidents on Autopilot
Q4 2021: 4.3 million miles
Q1 2022: 6.5 million miles
Q2 2022: 5.1 million miles
Q4 2022: 6.2 million miles
That’s the same old sketchy number they like to tout.
Autopilot can only be used in safer conditions, and if the car goes “whoops I’m out, take over” shortly before an accident that doesn’t count in that stat either.
It’s not an old number, it’s a new number reported every quarter.
But you’re right that comparing largely highway miles vs all miles isn’t completely fair. FSD on the other hand can be activated and used in most scenarios and has 3.2 million miles between accidents vs the US average of 500,000 miles. So still quite a bit safer but less so than autopilot.
As for autopilot deactivating right before an accident, if autopilot was active within 5 seconds of the accident it is still attributed to autopilot, not the human driver.
> It’s not an old number, it’s a new number reported every quarter.
"Old number" here means "the same old stat they trot out every time". The value gets updated; the concerns over its being a cherry-picked apples-to-oranges comparison remain.
FSD still nopes out in the most challenging circumstances, which are the circumstances where accidents are far more likely to happen. It's like a surgeon bragging about their low complication rate; if they run out of the OR screaming when something unexpected happens and their colleague has to take over, it's not a super useful stat.
It's ADAS Level 2. Tesla is one of many. And are you equally concerned aboout parents who allow their 15 and 16 year olds to drive on the same streets with no-to-little training... and where the parent cannot easily grab the steering wheel or press the brake?
Hey now, don't forget the lives of everyone else they are in traffic with. That increases the number of beta tested by an order of magnitude if you think about it.
This is a dumb comment. Leading with stretched claims that are then clarified in the fine print is different than outright lying. No one who did a modicum of due diligence bought a Tesla thinking they were getting a completely self-driving car that requires no human input.
There’s a reason why we have specific false and deceptive advertising laws. Most of it doesn’t rise to the level of fraud. Fraud requires a lie and reasonable/justifiable detrimental reliance on that lie.
> it baffles me that as of today I can still add a "Full Self-Driving Capability" option when ordering a Tesla
Capability, not feature. I know that isn’t how it’s marketed. But Elon isn’t claiming he has Level 5 right now. Most FSD buyers seem aware they’re paying into a research effort.
Fraud requires knowledge and intent. You’re making a good case for a class action lawsuit, i.e. civil action. Not for putting someone in jail.
> Capability implies that the car can do the thing (software included)
It’s made clear that isn’t the definition of capability they’re using [1].
I am not a fan of the Autopilot branding. But I struggle to see how someone buys FSD capability, realises their mistake on delivery and is then unable to get restitution through either a return or a resale.
> have 0% faith the current hardware will ever run a real level 5 solution
Me either! But that’s not fraud. It’s delusion. We don’t criminalise it because the difference between genius and crazy is often only apparent ex post facto.
Is the key difference that no one can prove the current hardware will be unable to reach a level 5 solution?
Taken to the (more) absurd we wouldn’t have this issue if the claim was the cars could fly, be boats, or time travel. People wouldn’t buy the “capability” either.
This is a fascinating murky area and seems there’s no market solution beyond caveat emptor
> a fascinating murky area and seems there’s no market solution beyond caveat emptor
I think so. It's interesting to discuss and think about, because the grey area is incredibly complex. (Not that we get too far into it on these kinds of forums.)
Generally, when you don't know that a product definitely can do something, you don't sell it saying that it has the "capability" to do it. That's fraud.
> when you don't know that a product definitely can do something, you don't sell it saying that it has the "capability" to do it. That's fraud.
Capability is defined as "the facility or potential for an indicated use or deployment" [1]. There are other definitions. But selling capability based on future potential is not fraudulent, unless you say the capability is present.
I think you're reading the word "potential" incorrectly for the context. Dictionaries are tricky things to read, because they tend to incorrectly communicate nuances. The capability to do something means that it can be done, not that it might be able to be done. Otherwise, my Honda has the capability to fly.
No, because there is no reasonable potential for it to generate enough thrust to be a lifting body. We understand aerodynamics enough to say that. We don’t understand self-driving cars enough to rule out the sensors on today’s Teslas being adequate, given the right software.
Saying someone is capable of climbing a mountain, conditioned on training, isn’t a lie. The caveat is important. I think Tesla has played fast and loose with its caveats in a way that produces civil liability. But it doesn’t appear to be wilfully defrauding its customers, who are more or less happy with their cars.
We do understand flight well enough that I can confidently tell you that given an appropriately sized and shaped ramp, my Honda can fly. It doesn't even need a software upgrade, the car as it is today can do it!
A Tesla today has no self-driving capability without software that doesn't exist. That means it doesn't have self-driving capability. It doesn't mean that someone "played fast and loose with caveats."
> 2019 Musk publicly stated Model 3's would support robotic taxi functionality in 2020
No evidence these forecasts were made in bad faith. Delusion isn’t criminal. It’s mis-selling in the here and now, in absolute terms, in a way that causes damage, that is problematic.
He made the statement it made no financial sense to buy any other car than a Tesla because of the certainty of robo taxi functionality arriving in 2020. He sold people on the promise that their car would be revenue generating in 2020.
Everyone who bought a Tesla with FSD since 2019 should sue Elon for lost revenues from failing to deliver robo taxi functionality over three years late (and counting!) than originally stated.
When you sell a capability you are making a commitment. The fact that you deluded yourself about it does not get you off the hook. You are still responsible for your claims. Or should be.
> when you sell a capability you are making a commitment
Sure. And if you sold the promise of future capability with no intent on delivering it, that's fraud. But if you try, it isn't. And if you fail, your customers should have a claim on you. But I don't think it should be a crime.
I don't think Musk deserves the benefit of the doubt. His history of just lying about this sort of stuff (outside of Tesla-related claims) is too long and rich for that.
I'm sure there is a negligence or recklessness standard that an overzealous prosecutor can apply here. Being willfully stupid about your own company and the products they produce in order to repeatedly get away with delusional over-promising could be construed that way, as could creating a culture that suppresses internal doubt about your company's capabilities.
A perverse culture of presumed lawlessness has migrated from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. You see it, here, when top-voted comments scoff at the notion of a perpetrator getting jail time. Hopefully, these sentences result in people being less cavalier about criminality. (Andreessen pivoting back to pumping web3 tempers my hope.)
He is too big to jail. He legally/lawfully been spending nice chunk of revenue for lobbying and has many ex-politicians working for him. So unless you operate in gray area (maybe one day your car will self drive) and not in black area (our machines never worked and actually some people even die because of misdiagnosis), you should be good to continue. I also think he has reason to attach himself so much to politics - you already have many republicans like Jim Jordan strongly defending him (like with Trump) regardless of any law breaking.
Holmes, Madoff etc... are all the proof that you need that the only people who go to Jail for fraud are the ones whose fraud hurts specifically investors.
I'm not saying you're wrong in the aggregate, but can't you make a better argument? How can noting two people who went to jail for one reason be "all the proof you need"?
The context here is the rich and powerful. A reality show actor is not in that group and doesn't have those priveledges. Prosecuting someone like that does not make the powerful uncomfortable by setting a precedent so it's done all the time.
But the only time one of their in-group is sent to prison is when it hurts other rich and powerful.
There are investment fraud prosecutions literally all the time, they just get 5-10 years in prison usually, not life. They aren't on national news because few people know the scammer or the victims.
I think the OP meant more, "the only rich people".
Having enough money to have the direct line to someone important in a political party is valuable. Enough prosecutors have a mind for future ambitions and understand that some battles just aren't worth fighting.
That doesn't make for straight up immunity, but it does change the calculus enough that so long as no one else really cares about your crime, they can let it slide or negotiate it down to something trivial.
> it does change the calculus enough that so long as no one else really cares about your crime, they can let it slide
This ignores the other side of the calculus: the political and career benefits of high-profile takedowns. I don't claim this balances across the power spectrum. But it's a far cry from the dystopia OP posits.
However you put it, but this judgement proves that justice exists, and i am happy to see scammers put behind bars in the mother of democracy. USA in-spite of its gun culture still rocks in some aspects.
If you steal more than $5K three times in California, you will get 25 years in prison [1], and while I think that's disgusting and detestable, I don't want any elites getting special treatment either, so as to force change in those sentencing guidelines.
> I don't want any elites getting special treatment either...
These days I normally roll my eyes and stop reading when I encounter someone saying "the elites" but in this case it is 100% appropriate: she was a member of a wealthy elite, and both deliberately and casually used her connections from the get go.
No, (and I'm not sure that "causally" would even result in a comprehensible sentence).
Her deliberate use was exploiting her very close childhood friendship with Tim Draper's kids to get Draper to fund her and use his network to find other investors and to get the message out. Another was her using her network to get a number of distracting and bizarre board members (ex generals and the like), especially when Vally VCs (other than Draper) refused to give the company the time of day.
The casual way I noticed was how she just slipped into a milieu of Ted talks, various "though leader" pieces, and circulated at Davos and wherever. No gawky fish-out-of-water period.
This is quite different from the typical nerd "has to get used to things" situation and gave her tremendous credibility with the rubes outside the valley.
I would drive or bike past their office on Page Mill and for a long time had no idea what they did, despite having been in the life sciences myself at the time. They were weirdly physically in Silicon Valley but simultaneously not part of it.
“She both deliberately and causally used her connections” would mean she concisely chose to use the connections and the use of those connections was a necessary condition of whatever transpired.
Seems to me to be a much stronger statement than “she used her connections and didn’t seem to care too much about doing so”.
Regarding her seeming effortless transition into the public spotlight, I’d imagine it’s learned from a young age as an “elite”. Fun fact, her great* grandfather made the yeast company you probably use.
As an idiom "casually used her connections" can mean "without due consideration" or "without compunction". It implies that "using her connections" was an easy and simple choice for her, as opposed to one in which she wrestled with the moral dimension.
Three strikes can be triggered with much less, even petty theft can trigger it. In this example, the defendant received 25 years in prison for his third crime of stealing a pair of socks[0]
"Specifically, the Three Strikes law made it possible for a repeat offender to receive a prison sentence of 25 years to life for a nonserious or nonviolent felony (for example, petty theft with a prior)"[1]
The federal sentencing guidelines have nothing to do with California state criminal law. Of course, if an act is both a federal and state crime, you can be prosecuted for each.
In fact, if an act is a crime in multiple states (which is possible), you can be charged and punished separately by each state as well as the federal government if it is also a federal crime. This rarely happens even where theoretically possible, but it can (its much more common for other jurisdictions to prosecute if you are acquitted in one but the act could be prosecuted in another as well.)
>if an act is a crime in multiple states (which is possible), you can be charged and punished separately by each state
For the California three strikes law, am I correct in guessing all three strikes have to be in the state of California, or can 1-2 of the earlier strikes be in another state?
If the former is true, is the optimal choice after 2 strikes to leave California permanently (other than ceasing criminal activity of course)?
> For the California three strikes law, am I correct in guessing all three strikes have to be in the state of California
The prior strikes don't have to be in California or under California law, but if they are convictions from another jurisdiction, the conviction must include all the elements of a California offense which would be countable as a prior strike (one that is classified as a “serious or violent felony”.)
The final strike must be a conviction under California law.
> If the former is true, is the optimal choice after 2 strikes to leave California permanently
Well, I suppose, but note that sonething like 23 other states and the Federal government have three strikes laws, too, and many of them (including the federal one) consider prior strikes from other jurisdictions.
And habitual criminals aren’t often warmly welcomed by foreign immigration authorities.
Three strikes and you’re out isn’t about retribution, it’s about the strong evidence that the specific deterrence and rehabilitation effect of prison will not work on a particular individual.
Do you know of anyone that’s been convicted of wage theft, sent to prison, convicted of a new count of wage theft, sent to prison, and convicted of a new count of wage theft
… or did you just want to flog your hobbyhorse regardless of how poor the fit was?
Yea, my wife works at a retail store here in the bay area and theft so normalized its unbelievable to me. They hire low paying loss prevention staff that have 0 power to do anything and just use to their time to look daunting while following shoplifters around so they can claim insurance loss when they walk out of the store with merch. They don't call the police or do anything that could be cause for the criminals to bring a suit against the store for violating their rights.
And 11 federal years is a longer sentence than 11 years in most state systems, since there is much less opportunity to serve less than a full sentence in the federal system (short of executive pardon/commutation). There’s very limited good conduct time, but no systematic parole eligibility and early release.
Stealing tens of millions from VC funds that have multi billion dollar portfolios. Thats the scope. Compared to stealing catalytic converter off someone making $40k a year and who has $2,000 in the bank and will need to spend half their savings to replace their catalytic converter.
> If you steal more than $5K three times in California (...)
Possible typo, linked article lists $950.
Quote: "Grand Theft is punishable under California's “Three Strikes” system. (...) If you get three “strikes” on your record, you'll serve a minimum of twenty-five years in a state prison. (...) to be guilty of Grand Theft under CPC §§487(a)-(d), you must: Take property or services worth more than $950; or (...)".
Can't tell if serious. Can you see how the second might be seen as worse than the first? Literally perverse incentives.
"Go big or go home" and no worries! Couple years in Federal summer camp and you go back to your cushy upper class lifestyle as a consultant or startup advisor, or "executive coaching" for other future/wannabe scammers
You may not like it but that is in fact the letter of the law. The letter does not get bent to produce the outcome that feels more fair or just. To do so is to abandon the principle of rule of law to begin with. You probably should learn at some point, the legal system is basically a pedantic genie interpreting 3 wishes. "oh I wish the 3 strikes law applied to people like Holmes as well." "Granted".
I'm flatly amazed they couldn't prove anybody died as a result of her deliberate greed-fueled negligence in providing fake medical test results. She should be charged with manslaughter.
I think this is harder to prove than you'd think. You can't just prove that Theranos did a blood test and someone died, you'd have to prove that if Theranos did their jobs correctly that person would have survived.
It ends up being a long chain of probabilities. Would the real test have shown a false negative? Would the treatment have definitely cured them (given that most treatments aren't 100% effective)? Would they have even sought treatment? Etc, etc.
It's kind of like how if a substance ends up causing cancer it's very hard to prove that an individual got cancer from that substance. You can see the effect in aggregate, but at an individual level it's very hard to prove they got it from this substance instead of pollution or smoking or eating too much meat or flying or whatever.
This is the same. You can say in aggregate that the patients would have lived longer with accurate tests, but it's hard to say what an individual outcome would have been.
Is each individual investment over $5k? By letter of the law, you can steal $25 a million times, or $25 million one time, but you better not steal $5k three times.
But did she steal more than 5k more than once. As written, you can steal $25 a million times and the law does not apply. You can steal $25 million one time and the law does not apply.
The Bureau of Prisons will designate where she goes, and unless there's some prevailing medical reason (unlikely), or other reasons involving cooperation, request, security threats, access to particular religious facilities, or a repeat stay, my understanding is they're constrained by statute to pick a reasonable distance from home (that might be only X years from release date though).
The women's FCI in Dublin, California is an easy drive and they (presumably) have her level of security. If she wants to say F California (maybe she did in her PSR) then maybe Bryan TX is her destination. Could also be some random third facility. I don't think if a flight risk to Mexico is a concern that they'd be sending her so close to Mexico, but it may upgrade her security level enough that Dublin's off the table.
It's all time and it all sucks. Her kids will get to see her if their father wants them to, perhaps every weekend.
I'm sure you're right, but the reason I know about them is that I do know a guy who used one, and got a "better" prison. No names, for obvious reasons.
While incarcerated, half the people "know a guy". Maybe the prison was "better", or maybe it was just a different mix of pros and cons.
Not only was the advice I received unhelpful, following it actually made my stay longer. My family would have been better off taking the substantial amount of money and setting it on fire.
One of the questions I have about any fraudster is where they fall on the goof/sociopath spectrum. It's surprisingly easy to start a Ponzi scheme by accident, after all. You just offer investors good returns (legal), be too optimistic about how it will go (legal), and then give them the promised returns anyhow by using other investor money (very illegal). I suspect a number of companies even get away with it, as they get in the black fast enough to be able to cover things up. But a lot of the people who get caught look to be eager-to-please fuckups, not calculating criminals.
But if I ever had any question about Holmes, it was richly answered for me by her having not one but two children while under indictment for crimes that yielded an 11-year sentence. I cannot imagine the kind of person who has kids knowing there were good odds they'd have to abandon them for much of their childhood.
I don't like Holmes and am pleased she's getting some comeuppance, but I can play Devil's Advocate in this one space: maybe she always wanted kids, focused on her career (lol), then this all happened, XYZ. Holmes is 39 years old. If she really, truly wanted biological children then now was the time to make sure it happened. She's a villain, but she's also a complex human being that probably has multiple priorities, goals, ambitions, etc.
Devil's advocating myself: she could freeze eggs too, yes. Can't speculate on the pros and cons of different decisions.
That is definitely not true. There's no particular reason to think being a single parent is, ceteris paribus, harmful.
But having a parent in prison growing up? That's extremely hard on kids.
And more than that, part of having kids is an obligation to protect and care for them. An obligation she knew that there was good odds she would not be in a position to fulfill. That's horrific to me.
I think that's a pretty bizarre way to take "this person should not have had children". Once they do it, we can't talk about it? Do I have to stop saying "let's work to end teen pregnancy" because of all the kids out there who whose mothers were teens?
The typical argument against teen pregnancy is that it limits the life options for the mother, whereas you're arguing that the having these children represents harm towards the children.
People usually don't make the argument that teen pregnancy harms the children of teen pregnancy because you're implicitly arguing that non-existence is preferable for the children.
Sorry, but at least with respect to typicality, this is wrong:
> The typical argument against teen pregnancy is that it limits the life options for the mother, whereas you're arguing that the having these children represents harm towards the children.
I just googled "why is teen pregnancy bad" and every one of the relevant pages mentioned harms to children. And it seems pretty weird to me that you are so eager to sweep aside the harms to them. Those same teens could have children later and everybody would be better off.
> You're implicitly arguing that non-existence is preferable for the children.
I am not, and that is an absolutely wild think to take from it. It's akin to the kooky arguments of anti-contraception types and frustrated would-be grandparents that not having a child is basically equivalent to murder.
Sure, maybe. I guess I'm just saying there is more than one plausible explanation for the decisions she made regarding motherhood. I may detest what she did, she doesn't need any defending. It's easy to be overly reductive about people, but most people have complex, unrelated, and sometimes contradictive motivations.
People who do bad things often have complex motivations. That doesn't make what they did not bad. Whatever Holmes's internal state, she chose to have children that she knew she was very likely to have to abandon. I'm sure there are things in her character and history that might explain this, some more sympathetic than others. But are you claiming there's something that could justify that level of disregard for the wellbeing of children?
Because my original response that this conversation in a part of was to the comment:
> I cannot imagine the kind of person who has kids knowing there were good odds they'd have to abandon them for much of their childhood.
I think that's highly unimaginative and can reduces someone to caricature.
> But are you claiming there's something that could justify that level of disregard for the wellbeing of children?
First: Justify to whom? Who sets the criteria for what is a good enough justification? Your language on this rankles a bit. Especially because...
Second: Holmes children have a father of means, they have much higher odds of being well cared and achieving good life outcomes than most American children. And they'll have an opportunity for at least some relationship with their mother. You act like having a mother in jail is some sort of damnable curse that has been placed on this children.
You caught me; I was being hyperbolic for effect. Perhaps you've heard of it? Anyhow, I can imagine sociopaths.
> Justify to whom?
To society, which has a duty of care toward all children? To her children once they are adults? And normally I'd say, "to herself", but see the previous bit about sociopaths.
> have much higher odds
Oh? You have statistics on this? Where a certain amount of money makes up for a parent in prison? A parent who was a notorious criminal who had the kids knowing she was likely to abandon them? I look forward to seeing that. There must have been some very detailed studies.
An IPO doesn't involve the company paying stockholders. It involves investors paying the company. Then previous stockholders sell their shares to future ones.
And bondholders understand up front that they are getting cash back on a particular date; that's the whole deal with a bond. Stockholders, though, expect profits to come from a functioning enterprise that generates value, not newer stockholders.
Any bets she actually reports? Odds anyone? I feel a woman of her means and personality may try to disappear, go off grid. Does she still have access to money? Were her assets frozen?
Skipping town on a sentence puts one in a rarified category where enforcement is now a federal problem, and the FBI has long memories, an international reach, and no statute of limitations on how long they can hunt a person who is sentenced. At which point, if they fall back under US custody, they get to start their sentence (as well as go on trial for the additional penalties associated with fleeing custody).
I'm aware of one case where for a suspect in a murder, the FBI put together a yacht party in a foreign country, got the target on the ship, sailed it out to international waters, and took them into custody at that point. I'm loathe to see what ends they'd go to to apprehend someone with a sentence hanging over them.
> Skipping town on a sentence puts one in a rarified category where enforcement is now a federal problem
Enforcement of federal crimes like those Holmes was charged with is federal to start with. Skipping sentence makes it a US Marshals’ problem, though.
> I’m aware of one case where for a suspect in a murder, the FBI put together a yacht party in a foreign country, got the target on the ship, sailed it out to international waters, and took them into custody at that point.
Federal law enforcement has straight up hired people to kidnap a suspect from a country with which we have an extradition treaty; your example is hardly extreme. (And I’m talking about before the War on Terror.)
Though the best example of that is the DEA, not the FBI:
And one she's certainly (allegedly?) entertained in the past ~year[0].
>As evidence of what they described as her “attempt to flee the country shortly after she was convicted,” prosecutors highlighted the plane ticket Holmes had booked for Jan. 26, 2022, without any scheduled return date.
>They complained to her defense team that she hadn’t notified them or the court about the trip, which violated her bail conditions...
I dunno. This woman was so afraid of being imprisoned that she got herself pregnant twice. And others have mentioned the airplane tickets that were found before sentencing. I believe she'll try anything to get out of it.
People say stuff like this because it's fun to talk about, not because it's a live issue. Do you actually want to bet? There aren't a lot of serious odds you could suggest for this where I wouldn't bet she shows up, like everybody else does.
The last I heard, the founders of Ubiome had fled the country and are wanted by the FBI after their company was raided. Not everyone "shows up" if they have the means to flee.
You're right! Interesting. My original comment about odds wasn't a serious request to make a bet, just hyperbole. It does seem given her high profile if she did flee, she'd be right on the FBI top-10 most wanted list.
She'd instantly get caught, and it would have a profound effect on the next 15 years of her life (for instance: it would immediately put her in a higher security class of detention).
No, because there's probably a lot of eyeballs on her at this moment. She's probably the very definition of a flight risk I would imagine, given her personality, the scope of her crimes, and her previous attempt to flee.
However, you make it sound like it's super difficult to disappear. It can be as simple as getting on a boat and sailing off into the night, or an airplane... no Hollywood plot necessary - no one would have any clue who was onboard, and depending on the destination, they may not care either.
>No, because there's probably a lot of eyeballs on her at this moment.
Going on the lam for the rest of your life, with (or without?) your two young children, can't be a whole lot better than serving your white-collar time, can it? I mean, it's not like she's independently wealthy and can vanish to some tropical island.
I mean for her yeah. The average guy wanted on a felony for stealing cars or something, could probably be fine working as an agricultural worker on a farm in Brazil or something for the rest of their life. I've met plenty of white euro looking people in South America living off the black market and frankly no one would bother to find out who they were unless their were some big reward, and usually there isn't.
You definitely don’t want to be a fugitive. If she tries to escape and gets caught (chances are any escapee will), they’ll stick her in a tough high-security prison, not the minimum security camp she’s meant to report to.
There are many places that do not extradite, even if you are known to be living there.
Life on the run is a Hollywood thing - the CIA isn't going to kick down her door and blackbag her back to the US. If she leaves the US, she is effectively gone unless she does something really stupid.
The CIA does not deal with fugitives....but the FBI does. They have a task force devoted to tracking down fugitives.
The FBI generally works through Interpol to bring back international fugitives (for example, Tamara Dadyan) but will also "blackbag" fugitives if necessary. It's just not necessary to do that very often.
The list of countries that don't extradite to the U.S. and the list of countries a wealthy person would want to live in don't have much overlap, unless you think Syria and Somalia are wonderful places to live. (There are a number of countries, like Indonesia and Vatican City that don't have extradition treaties with the U.S. but which will extradite to the U.S. through Interpol.)
The most famous recent example if probably Ghosn fleeing Japan to Lebanon. It does make one wonder how likely it will be for the next case. That being said, the coincidence of great wealth and being from a country that treats you as a hero and doesn't have extradition treaties with the west does seem quite low, but obviously not zero.
I don't know, living off of the grid sounds like it can get pretty uncomfortable. She doesn't really seem like the roughing it type. She probably has a better chance of using her money and connections to try and overturn the conviction on appeal, or maybe beg a future president for a pardon.
Spending a couple years in minimum security prison before being let out for "good behavior" with your slate clean is a much better prospect than spending your entire life on the run from the law.
Now that the ruling has landed, it's clear she's going to prison, and her born and unborn kids have outlasted their purpose, I'm sure she's going to ship them off to whatever outsourced child supervision service she's procured for that purpose. As long as the price was good.
I doubt she ever see a day behind bars. Like Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani. You would think guy is in prison; meanwhile both Wiki and some other pretty decent sources clearly state "free on $500,000 bail".
It's strange isn't it! Does it happen in other countries that you can negotiate when your prison sentence starts? Here in the UK, the judge passes sentence and literally "sends you down" to the cells to start it. (The holding cells in larger courts are physically below the dock where the prisoner is sentenced https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/send-dow... )
Also this rule only seems to apply to rich people. Poor people even in America go straight to prison.
in Hungary recently a famous musician got caught stealing electricity (for his apartments that were rented by others), got sentenced, but managed to postpone going to jail because he got sick.
Squeezing in a couple pregnancies while faced with spending her remaining childbearing years in prison adds to the drama and sadness here. What a lady.
I don’t know why but in my own perverse way, I can sometimes root for her, even still. Maybe I just see her as a cartoon/movie villain (we will sometimes root for them)—- I somehow don’t accept her a real person.
Good, her children will be better off not being raised by a felon mother. The father's family has plenty of money, the kids will be well cared for without her around. With luck the father will find a new mother for the kids and they'll forget about Holmes.
I have a really hard time believing that non-violent crimes should result in a person being locked in a cage. I'd rather see restrictions that limit their ability to do more damage, like when a reckless driver gets their license revoked. Besides, a free person with a job can pay back their debt to society, literally, with money, instead of the rest of us paying their living costs.
EDIT: As comments point out, it is arguable that the crimes in question are violent because they directly jeopardized people's health.
I’m in a similar boat. But corruption is uniquely caustic to a society. In its erosion of trust. And in its perpetrators’ unique ability to bounce back and cause trouble anew. Fraud at this scale, at Holmes’ level, is similar in those attributes.
> restrictions that limit their ability to do more damage
Under what penalty?
> free person with a job can pay back their debt to society
Construct a restriction on Holmes. I’ll propose a loophole. Then consider the cost of constantly litigating that with her.
Given she falsified medical results for so long, it's guaranteed some people have died as a result of her actions, that goes further than your average fraud
I actually think it’s worst. One can be a problem of anger issues where, for a time, someone lost it and someone got punched in the face, the other is a long term thought calculated full aware of consequences and with no care for the other. It also usually results in several persons being impacted.
For instance Bayer knowing that their products were contaminated with HIV still chose to sell them. Monsanto with well all their stuff. Corporate crime is really crazier in my opinions. It’s armies of lawyers and businesses men, engineers and stuff having no problem for harm. It’s just less direct than a punch on the face.
Disclaimer: violence is still bad to horrible nonetheless.
> anger issues where, for a time, someone lost it and someone got punched in the face
This merits the consideration of jail time. Nobody said automatic jail for all violence—the facts and circumstances may merit mandated therapy, for instance. But if someone refuses and keeps popping off punches, yes, the isolation prerogative of jail time takes hold.
You are right. It’s just interesting how cold thinking for crime in the corporate world can be just a big fine (even with thousands if not millions of people health are impacted and they all knew about it) but if you someone lose it on someone else it’s jail time. Again doesn’t mean he/she shouldn’t go to jail but where is any real balance with corporate crime and the free pass with money drops?
People always seem to be more forgiving of non violent crimes, but just have your house broken into whist you’re asleep with you kids in the house and it can seriously mess you up. It’s such a massive violation and you’ll struggle to sleep in that house again. I’d take a punch in the face any day of the week.
I 100% agree. I hate to bring it up in the context of a criminal that is already priveleged and insulated from so much of the unfairness of the criminal justice system, but almost all non-violent crime should be handled in non-prison ways. Honestly, who is better off because she's sitting in a jail cell for years?
Of course, it's legitimately hard for politicians to signal to voters that they take this stuff seriously without proposing longer and longer prison sentences for things that worry voters, which are usually crimes that "other people" do: high dollar white collar crime, drug dealing, etc.
> Honestly, who is better off because she's sitting in a jail cell for years?
Anyone who needs to trust their blood test results. If faking such results lands you in jail, that makes me trust the results and I can make medically relevant decisions based on them.
idk, corporations shell out a ton of money in fines for crimes they re-commit later on.
There's an argument that holmes would learn her lesson with a ~2yr sentence as opposed to an 11yr sentence. But I'm unconvinced that a 0yr sentence paid for by investor funds would prevent future crime.
It's like kids, they think you're joking about a penalty until you actual turn the car around once.
> rationalize violent/non-violent as boundary for jail/no-jail
Government has a monopoly on violence. This is a founding theory of why we have states. Furthermore, violence causes damage money can’t fix. Most non-violent crimes’ damages can be dollarised within margin.
Sorry, I was unclear. I meant people shouldn’t go to jail unless it’s violence, corruption or fraud. Then jail time should be on the table. (But never mandatory.)
What about receiving stolen property, perjury, campaign finance violations, etc? There are enough ethically flexible people out there and if you remove the major deterrent from doing these societally bad but nonviolent things I think occurrences of them would all increase a decent amount.
Campaign finance violations seem clear cut corruption. (Again, not mandatory jail sentencing. But jail is on the table.)
Perjury and contempt obviously need the capacity to put someone in jail. I resolve the moral discrepancy with their short durations. Theft is the elephant in the room for this framework, and I don't have a good answer for it.
> In 2011, Junker admitted to all of this when he pleaded guilty to one count of criminal conspiracy. Specifically, he acknowledged conspiring to solicit political campaign contributions from Fiesta Bowl employees and to later reimburse those employees in the guise of employee bonuses. (https://rollcall.com/2014/04/08/do-campaign-finance-violatio...)
There are campaign finance violations that I would not consider corruption in the quid-pro-quo sense but are still illegal. I am sympathetic to your line of reasoning though I think the current sentencing guidelines are by and large fair. I would like to see less emphasis on "intended loss" and more rewards for making victims whole.
Willful negligence resulting in death arguably is violence. It becomes obvious when the device is not a blood test but say firing a gun in the air without regard to where the bullet will land. Willfully misrepresenting medical testing is firing a gun in the air without regard to where it goes; it is totally unreasonable to believe the outcome will be anything but violent.
I think that the taking away of personal freedom is "democratic" in the sense that it is painful for rich and poor. Not so for financial penalties.
Consider a "fake it till you make it" company that produces medical equipment. During the the "fake it" phase some people suffered life changing damage directly related to the company's equipment. The damaged is quantified and the company pays up without breaking a (financial) sweat.
Mandatory sentence reductions for milestones like 50%, 75%, 100% of ordered restitution/forfeiture would almost certainly incentivize repayment. Right now the federal government collects 7% of what they are owned from criminal defendants, see https://sci-hub.se/https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/d... (page 2). It has been proven that white collar criminals are typically the more calculating type and that they weigh the risks of getting caught so if there is a good reason to preserve at least some of the money they fraudulently obtain instead of spending it all on luxury goods they will likely do so. It's very difficult to argue that the current system is effective when there are people who caused bank failures through million dollar frauds getting 7-8 years in prison and $100 a month restitution payment plans. Right now your "intended loss" (not actual loss) is all that matters for the purpose of sentencing guidelines calculation - for instance if you submit a fraudulent loan application for $50k and don't get it (or get it but pay it back) you're just as bad as the guy who got it and spent it at all.
Any time I've ever heard fines used in the context of a business, it's never paying back the money. It's paying back a fraction of the money. And usually it's to the government, not to the people harmed.
What were you thinking off? Surely no corporal punishment?
House arrest won't be on the table either ("what good does that do?"). Being barred from starting a company? I can see people arguing against that ("but it'll allow her to pay back the money sooner") for the same reasons they're arguing against punishment.
Completely agree. I'm not sure who benefits from locking people in cages when their ability to roam free doesn't endanger anyone's safety. Ban her from owning equity in any business if you need to avoid repeat offenses.
If the purpose is retribution or deterrence there are so many cheaper and less cruel ways to achieve those ends than taking decades of life and handing hundreds of thousands of dollars to prison industrial complex: caning, banishment, compulsory face tattoos of shame, whatever. The only reason we have prison sentences for crimes like this (along with most property and drug crimes) is so we can torture people without having to look at it directly. I wonder what society would be like if juries had to personally flog each person they sentence, or execute them at the date of (life_expectancy-sentence_years). The way we deal with crime in America today is sanitized barbarism, but if you peel back any layer of the justice system it's pretty easy to see it for what it is.
I don't think she, or other non-violent criminals, should be in prison. There are much more affordable and constructive ways to handle this. This isn't rehabilitation or justice, only punishment.
You do the crime, you do the time! It's called punishment because it's a damn crime. A person who made the decision to use shoddy materials to build a building knowing it will collapse, and that building does collapse and killed thousands. So that person should be "rehabilitated"? Give me a break. A little common sense goes a long way.
what does common sense tell us about having incredibly high incarceration and recidivism rates? are we too stupid to do better than throw everyone in a cage?
Punishment is an essential element of justice. How can there be justice without punishment for the crimes committed. Or do you propose the dead will have their life rehabilitated somehow?
