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.
Comments on “Former Tech Exec Pleads Guilty To Fraud”
RE: Former Tech Exec Pleads Guilty To Fraud
Disclosure in advance: I worked for the guy mentioned in this story at a previous company, where he pulled the same kind of shenanigans. I have never met a human being so lacking in integrity.
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
RE: Former Tech Exec Pleads Guilty To Fraud
Disclosure in advance: I worked for the guy mentioned in this story at a previous company, where he pulled the same kind of shenanigans. I have never met a human being so lacking in integrity.
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