[heassler]

I appreciate your points, I think this is an interesting debate. What I mean is that the right thing to do is to call things out if you know they are wrong, even if that involves risk. Assuming that you are absolutely certain that it is indeed a fraud and that the investors are not aware, that is the right and honourable thing to do. Not only that, but looking away is wrong. Think about the hundreds of Theranos employees who were too busy considering risk/benefit and decided to look the other way vs the whistleblower guy. Of those two, who do you think will have their career impacted? who do you think have their reputation tarnished?

Unless you live in China or another poor governance country, whistleblowing is actually encouraged. It signals integrity and honesty. If the thing is indeed a fraud, it will eventually collapse. When that happens, you will have a pretty embarrassing spot in your CV. When you look back in 10-20 years, on what side do you want to be?

Another minor point:

>I'm a small investor myself, far too small to even be allowed to invest in venture capital funds. Would I want some employee somewhere to take potentially life changing risks in order to protect me from losing a percentage or two of my money? Certainly not..

Pension funds invest in VC so even if you make minimum wage, you still most likely have money invested in VCs. The longer you wait, the more of people's money (pensions, endowments, etc) will be lost in this fraud.

[cbzbc]

> Unless you live in China or another poor governance country, whistleblowing is actually encouraged.

Whilst this may be true on paper the practice is rather different. Be aware that a company's lawyers will come after you with as much force of the law that they can muster in this situation

[kjellsbells]

> Assuming that you are absolutely certain that it is indeed a fraud

There's the rub, right there. There will always be a tiny doubt. Especially as a worker bee who doesn't have all the inside facts. People tend to talk themselves out of taking action due to this. The resolution is to document what you know, incontrovertibly, leave all speculation out of it and then hand the problem over to someone else. Which is why tiplines exist at the SEC, DHS, and other agencies where this sort of self-doubt is a serious impediment to reporting of malfeasance.