Hacker News Reader

Comment by AdrianB1 | Hacker News Reader

It is a bit amazing that people that do very bad things and cause huge prejudice that will never be fixed can get away very easy. 15 years is nothing to joke about, but if you do the math of how much money per year that means, it is better than working for a salary and a lot of people would go to prison for 1-2 years for that kind of money. "hey, who can I defraud of 50 million and I get 1 year of prison for it?"

View on HN

Also the fact that men are punished much more severely than women for similar crimes. [1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity

Here in New Zealand, white collar fraud is punished much less severely than benefit fraud.

It’s all rather depressing.

Among other things you are not factoring in the time, anxiety, and other downsides associated with both being charged with a crime as well as also knowing that you might be charged with a crime. During both prior to and after you are charged, the trial, waiting for the sentence and of course the actual sentence. Cost of legal fees and so on. That surely would take a big impact on many people. So point is it's not just the actual prison time.

Sitting in your villa eating fancy cheese while worrying that you might be charged with a crime probably still beats living paycheck to paycheck.

Well, not really. The money is long gone. She's now broke and facing jail time.

And the judgement is so large, even after prison she'll never have wealth beyond a middle-class lifestyle. She'll be like Jordan Belfort and die with a debt of several hundred million dollars.

It may be a long shot, but if she knew she is comiting fraud, and may be caught/sentences to bars, she may have stashed investors money in multiple ways, including having third party companies Theranos worked with that were simply a cover to get the money out legally. The size of the company and number of invoice flying back and forth indicates we will probably never find out, but once she's out for good behavior in less than 6 years, she may meet some unknown Joe Doe who will hire her at 7 figures to do nothing, in return for providing goods/services to Theranos during the company run.

Federal prison has maximum reduction of sentence of 15%. No parole. A 15 year sentence, if she gets that, will have her serve 12+ at a minimum, no less.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com