[_-___________-_]

This word "scam" gets thrown around so much these days that it's basically meaningless.

It's really unlikely that the failing startups described in TFA developed a food tech idea, pitched it to investors, rented space in a kitchen, etc just to scam people. It's far more likely that they were just clueless.

[catalogia]

Be that as it may, I was addressing the curious "if it was my fault, then it wasn't a scam" logic.

If scamming isn't scamming when you to it to clueless investors, does that mean Elizabeth Holmes should be a free woman? The people she scammed didn't do any due diligence, but that doesn't make her scam any less a scam.

[lotsofpulp]

Elizabeth Holmes falsified data and made false representations. That is a scam. Buying a machine that turns out to not do what you need it to do is not a scam.