AFAIK has always been this way for at least a decade.
An example would be Docker , has raised more than 200M yet it had no decent stream of revenue , it's litterrally a dead man walking yet the CEO left the boat years ago with tens of millions...
Startups that failed and have their founders go "bankrupt" are startups that you never ever hear about... The rest of startups you'll find on HN or have raised 100M+ millions often have their founders pocket millions when they raise very large amount ( 50M+ )...
There no surprise here , once you manage to get a business to a certain valuation / run-rate it's worth a lot thus you can trade that for cash , regardless of the "humiliation"
As far as I can tell, your average Joe or Josephine not only does not invest in these vehicles, they cannot! Because they are not accredited investors and/or Softbank's Vision Fund is not accepting new capital. So if you're a normal person worrying about getting conned after reading about WeWork, don't! If you're a rich person, consider settling for the market average rather than trusting an individual like Masayoshi Son with your money.
As far Masayoshi Son going to jail, the payoff for Neumann was likely contractually obligated or negotiated to get better leadership into place. Unless some law was broken -- which I doubt, and almost certainly not provably -- criminal charges do not seem to be appropriate. Bankruptcy does not seem to be in the cards either considering he did not have that much exposure to WeWork.
The absolutely do, even if they might now realize it. The stickiest and most sought after capital for funds is typical from pensions or large asset managers.
And at that point, it's a solid argument that they all would have been better off if SoftBank's capital had instead been previously allocated to non-zombie / financial-engineering businesses.