Former Tech Exec Pleads Guilty To Fraud
from the hmmm dept
Now, I'm the first person who starts yelling when I see some idiotic tech exec do something stupid to hide things for accounting purposes (for example, look at my PeopleShell posts), so I was expecting to have a similar response when I started reading about how the former President of Critical Path pleaded guilty to securities fraud for misleading the company's auditors. Now, maybe I've just become desensitized following the massive frauds of Enron and other such companies, but it's not clear that what this guy did was really that terrible. Slightly misleading, yes, but worth time in jail? Not clear. The main example they give was of him setting up a software swap as two separate contracts, where the exact same amount was paid (and it was paid) on separate days to each company. Now, it's a little misleading, but in the end, the deals do cancel each other out. And, you are supposed to account for bartered goods, anyway, so in some ways this made the accounting more realistic. Maybe it's just not clearly explained in the article, but it's unclear to me how what he did was so terrible.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
RE: Former Tech Exec Pleads Guilty To Fraud
Your link didn't work for me, but from previous stories, what did he that was so bad was to tell the press and analysts that the company was going to be break-even the next quarter, then sold a ton of company stock he had gotten as cheap options, making tens of millions of dollars personally, while cooking the books to book deals as revenue that hadn't actually come in.
Wired ran a story a little while ago http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,42090,00.html about some of the shennanigans he pulled at Geoworks - check it out.
Thanks,
GeoDog
do that was so bad? He promised the analyt that nowone
[ link to this | view in thread ]
RE: Former Tech Exec Pleads Guilty To Fraud
Your link didn't work for me, but from previous stories, what did he that was so bad was to tell the press and analysts that the company was going to be break-even the next quarter, then sold a ton of company stock he had gotten as cheap options, making tens of millions of dollars personally, while cooking the books to book deals as revenue that hadn't actually come in, so it looked like the company would make break-even. He personally enriched himself at the expense of the shareholders is what he did.
Wired ran a story a little while ago http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,42090,00.html about some of the shennanigans he pulled at Geoworks - check it out.
Thanks,
GeoDog
[ link to this | view in thread ]