Theranos-Style Fraud Has Become the Norm

devops000

Cannot read due to paywall

whimsicalism

found the article quite weak, hurt by the East Coast media’s tendency to make everything about government & Trump. > Donald Trump has unashamedly profited from the presidency, earning more than $1.4 billion in 2025 from cryptocurrency deals. The Trump family has received significant money coming from countries that wish to bend the president’s ear on foreign policy. Donald Trump Jr. has benefited from the sudden interest in his business acumen. Months after the younger Trump’s venture-capital firm took an ownership stake in a rare-earth-magnet start-up, it was awarded a $620 million government loan. I was hoping, if this style of fraud has become the norm , that we would have more true non-governmental examples. I do not agree that it has become the norm and don’t think this article does much to make the case.

ViktorRay

I don’t believe it has become the norm. We’re talking about fraud about medical results over technology that essentially violates basic principles. Honestly it’s kind of astounding Theranos ever became so hyped. The mythology of Silicon Valley and the glorification of shady shit probably helped. Reddit for example started out by doing shady shit. They would fake activity on the site with bots. Y Combinator and Paul Graham glorified this kind of fake it until you make it bullshit. Reddit was an early Y Combinator startup. So I think they have an indirect responsibility of promoting this culture. (Obviously they were not directly involved in Theranos)

orliesaurus

The real fraud is companies raising 100s of millions with fakeish ARR values and then couple of years later they collapse into nothingness

IAmGraydon

Fraud is rampant before major economic crashes. Same thing happened in the 1920s. Charles Ponzi, the Florida real estate schemes, Goldman Sachs leveraged investment trusts. There was even what might be the first tech bubble pump and dump with RCA (a radio company). A bunch of investors bought up shares and then went to work hyping it to the public so they would buy in. The investors then dumped it and left everyone else holding the bag. Sound familiar?

bix6

I see a lot of red flags if not outright fraud. But perhaps it’s always been this way? VC is for the taking if you’re convincing.

ur-whale

https://archive.ph/BdlXw

xiphias2

It looks like Elizabeth Holmes payed some PR company to get a lot of news articles her to whitewash her name just when we forgot about how cruel she was. On me it works just the opposite, she should just serve her sentence in her luxury prison and come out quiet.