Deception, Or Just Disarray, In Enron's Broadband Group?

from the good-question dept

While it's pretty clear that Enron had all sorts of financial scams going on throughout the company, the NY Times is pointing out that prosecutors may be going a bit too far with their charges of fraud against the broadband unit. There certainly may have been financial fraud, but part of the indictment claims that the company completely fabricated certain technologies they claimed to be selling. That may not be true - and it sounds like there's plenty of evidence that the company really was working on these technologies. The problem is that not all of the technologies they had were living up to their own hype. However, as someone in the article points out, "If they succeed in convicting the Enron developers, anyone in Silicon Valley can be sent to jail." It certainly sounds like the typical hype, talking up a product before it's fully ready for primetime. Perhaps misleading, but it's questionable if it's really fraud. Of course, some might feel that the world would be a better place if software developers were forced to live up to their promises.

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