Seattle startup’s ex-CFO accused of diverting $35M, losing it in crypto crash

And how is an euphemism make it different?

> that's the word you use until you know the correct one

"Accused of" and "allegedly" do this adequately. We don't know if this is embezzlement or if the firm's financial controls were so loose the CFO could plausibly and single-handedly "divert" cash like this. The title is generous, not incorrect.

If we don't know whether someone stole money the appropriate thing to do is say exactly that. Not make up something else and say that's what they might have done.

Embezzlement. The word you're looking for is embezzlement.

Disagree. Actually disagree twice. The company had approved a treasury policy (apparently written by the CFO) that said cash had to be in t-bills or similar (therefore not unbacked stablecoin). But the policy is orthogonal to access control to the cash. You can have a CFO who decides where to put cash, but still require two officers to approve any transfer > $1M (for example). This neatly takes care of the problem where your CFO is a criminal, or has to pay ransom for his kidnapped wife, etc.

The argument is that he didn't (a) disclose what he was doing, nor (b) disclose that he owned the company where the money went.

I work at a very, very small startup. Even our very small startup has by-laws that cover this:

> An officer who is a party to, or who is a director or officer of or has a material interest in any person who is a party to, a material contract or transaction or proposed material contract or transaction with the Corporation shall disclose in writing to the Corporation, or request to have entered in the minutes of the meeting of Directors, the nature and extent of such person’s interest at the time and in the manner provided by the Act. Such a person may participate in any discussion related thereto but shall not vote on any resolution to approve the same except as provided by the Act.

I suspect this is pretty boiler plate stuff. The family corporation that my wife and I own doesn't have this text in its by-laws...but that's because it's a closely-held company. I'd certainly hope that a "real" VC-funded company would have this text.

Unrecovered money should be converted to extra years in prison at a rate of the average salary in the country. That would be a few hundred years of prison, right? Good enough deterrence for people to do bad things with money.

> Elizabeth Holmes just spent two years delaying her prison date, and she (and her co-conspirator) will only serve a decade for stealing ten times as much.

They didn't steal. They raised money from investors based on lies and squandered it. Of course, some of the cash made it back into their pockets, but it's not like they pocketed the whole $900m they raised based on their falsehoods.