CA didn't start out as a deliberate scam, and continues to run today despite being essentially a scam for many years. The companies we're talking about today --- Groupon, Zynga --- don't have long enough track records as publicly traded entities for us to presume they're run in good faith; variants of the things that got Kumar sentenced probably aren't even crimes when they happen during mezzanine funding, when the people being "scammed" are sophisticated investors.

You implied, Zynga isn't a pump-and-dump scheme because Mark Pincus still runs it, and nobody would inflict the management of a poorly-performing public company on themselves. Well, that's just not true.

There are better arguments against the assertion that Groupon is a pump-and-dump scheme than "it must suck to be Andrew Mason these days" (it does not suck to be Andrew Mason, by the way). For instance, Groupon was open about its liabilities and the enormous risks it faced, and its whole industry sector was very carefully scrutinized.

I'm done arguing this point. My nerdly brain just couldn't handle the idea that being Andrew Mason in Q4'12 is so painful that simply holding his job imputes him credibility.