No Jailbreak For Lizzy ...

[uwe]

... at least that is what I would recommend.





https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/01/elizabeth-holmes-prison-founder-theranos

I'm not gloating either. Yes, it's not an unfair sentence, yes, it's not a horrible institution, but as mild a prison as you can possibly imagine.

https://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/bry/

But it's still a prison,

https://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/bry/bry_ao_handbook.pdf?v=1.0.0

she won't be up for parole until 85% of her 11-year-sentence is served and her two small children can see her only once a week, they'll be teenagers/young adults by the time she gets out.

She'll no doubt be a model inmate, well-organized and disciplined as she is. And there will be a book about it and, eventually, a film about redemption.

I still can't believe the amount of people (and the amounts they spent) who fell for her crap. The "if something sounds too good to be true, then it probably isn't"-test was obviously deactivated by her investors.

[Dave W]

There will always be suckers who fall for the big-time con artists like her. Look at S(c)am Bankman-Fried. People who ignore "if it seems too good to be true..."

I have even less sympathy for her than for her co-conspirator Sunny Balwani, since she claimed to have been controlled by him. Oh, the poor helpless female.

Reminds me of a certain case in Michigan.

[uwe]

Admittedly, I have a certain sympathy for fraud if it's done elaborately well and feeds on the low to
very low instincts of the right people.



Newman/Redford were such a wonderful pair.

Which case in Michigan?

[Dave W]

Admittedly, I have a certain sympathy for fraud if it's done elaborately well and feeds on the low to
very low instincts of the right people.
...

Which case in Michigan?

Not a fraud case, but the same outrageous defense.

Abigail Simon, Catholic school tutor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, caught having an affair with a high school sophomore about 10 years ago. She was charged with criminal sexual conduct and offered a plea deal that would have given her a year in prison and put her on the Michigan sex offender list. She rejected it and went to trial.

Her defense was that she was totally under his control, terrified of him, and unable to do anything about it for fear of her safety. This, despite a monumental amount of evidence that she initiated it and appeared to be blissfully happy. On the stand, she whined, cried and made such a scene that she was admonished by the judge. She was found guilty and sentenced to 8 to 25 years. She was paroled late last year.

She was the subject of the NBC Dateline episode called Dangerous Liaisons, you can probably find it online. As I recall, Dateline made no mention of the fact that the victim was black (she's white), which to me added a worse aspect to her ridiculous defense.

[uwe]

Alas!, in the US of A you go to jail for that, in France your significant other becomes President and you the First Lady. I think regarding this aspect, I like France better.

[Dave W]

Alas!, in the US of A you go to jail for that, in France your significant other becomes President and you the First Lady. I think regarding this aspect, I like France better.

I found it and watched it online tonight. Correction: the victim's face wasn't shown but he seems to be white. Sometimes one's memory plays tricks.

In general I'm ambivalent when the adult is a woman and the kid is boy. But not in this case. She was in authority over him, she was the aggressor, and her defense was to try to make herself the victim, drag him through the mud, and essentially accuse him of crimes that could have put him in prison for decades, if anyone had believed her outrageous claims.