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by rqtwteye 1173 days ago
“ Javice claimed they couldn't provide user personal information "due to privacy concerns””

That’s pretty much what Theranos did. The due diligence people walked away and threw a few hundred million more at Theranos. That’s compares to the due diligence we went through when I worked at a small startup years ago. It was only for a few million but they made us go through hell with all their information request.

Seems if you want to commit fraud it’s best to go really big. The bigger you are the less scrutiny and less consequences.

2 comments

> That’s compares to the due diligence we went through when I worked at a small startup years ago. It was only for a few million but they made us go through hell with all their information request.

I went through this as an exec at a startup for a deal in the "few 10's of millions" range and the level of effort for the due diligence process was astounding. I'm pretty sure that by the end of the process, the acquiring company knew more about us than we did ourselves.

Isn't it more likely that it's just the bigger the fraud the more likely we are to hear about it, whereas even if 50% of deals the size you went through turned out fraudulent most of them wouldn't make the news and the ones that did might still not make the front page of HN?