Cofounders of bankrupt poop-testing startup uBiome have been charged with fraud

businessinsider.com

35 points·rmason··8 comments

Theranos's technology was imaginary that an average person should have questioned.

Did uBiome's technology work? That would offend me more if it didn't.

Body Brokers is a good medical fraud movie if into such things, based on the NPR article with some license - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9585676/

The article itself seems to imply that it might have been legitimate (though their billing practices sure weren’t), at least, though I’m not entirely certain either way.

Center for Medicare Services love to make examples out of people who bill “creatively”. There is a pile of legal opinions about what constitutes fraud in medical billing. Apparently uBiome either had bad legal council or chose to ignore their recommendations.

I mean, the article says that the founders falsified documents. Once that happens you're way past the point of "we had bad legal council", you're into full on "we hope we can fly to a tropical island before we get caught" mode.

I'm not hear to defend uBiome. That being said, have you ever had to fill out a vendor survey? There are some seriously confidential asks in there. Sometimes I punt on information I don't want to and shouldn't have to disclose, and sometimes I just make up crazy numbers to fill in.

If the founders committed outright fraud, they should be punished, of course. But the burden of proof for accredited investors claiming fraud should be pretty damn high.

Accredited investors are granted the privilege of investing in risky businesses, and it's only reasonable that they should also have to pay the price when those businesses fail for almost any reason.

They can't have it both ways.

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