Theranos COO Balwani Found Guilty

Theranos Executive Ramesh Balwani Found Guilty of 12 Counts of Fraud

Ramesh Balwani, a former top executive at Theranos, was found guilty on Thursday of 12 counts of fraud, in a verdict that was more severe than that of his co-conspirator, Elizabeth Holmes, and that solidified the failed blood-testing start-up as the ultimate Silicon Valley cautionary tale.

Mr. Balwani and Ms. Holmes, who together pushed Theranos to soaring heights with a promise to revolutionize health care, are the most prominent tech executives to be charged with and convicted of fraud in a generation. A jury of five men and seven women took 32 hours to produce a verdict, convicting Mr. Balwani, known as Sunny, of all 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

How a fake job offer took down the world’s most popular crypto game

Earlier this year, staff at Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis were approached by people purporting to represent the fake company and encouraged to apply for jobs, according to the people familiar with the matter. One source added that the approaches were made through the professional networking site LinkedIn.

After what one source described as multiple rounds of interviews, a Sky Mavis engineer was offered a job with an extremely generous compensation package.

The fake “offer” was delivered in the form of a PDF document, which the engineer downloaded — allowing spyware to infiltrate Ronin’s systems. From there, hackers were able to attack and take over four out of nine validators on the Ronin network — leaving them just one validator short of total control.

Should I Sell My Crypto? Voyager Bankruptcy Has Shaken Some Retail Investors

Aaron Selenica, 21, says he “fell into the crypto craze” last fall after hearing about Bitcoin from his friends and joining the University of Connecticut’s crypto club. He saw ads for Voyager at the school’s basketball games and eventually invested about $15,000 in Bitcoin on the platform.

Now, his holdings are worth about $6,900 and he doubts he’ll even be able to get that back. He knew investing in crypto came with risks, but he never expected the platform to collapse.

“It feels like I was robbed,” he said. “I just don’t understand how this could be legal. I’m not going to invest on another platform. I’m done with crypto.”

Amazon Hit With Securities Suit Over Pandemic-Related Infrastructure Overcapacity

It has been well over two years since the initial coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., but the pandemic continues to affect businesses. Many companies that found themselves making business decisions at when the outset of the pandemic are still dealing with the consequences of those decisions. In at least some cases, the consequences from those business decisions are leading to securities class action litigation, as the lawsuit filed this week against Amazon shows.

SEC Charges Washington, D.C. Investor with Insider TradingThe SEC’s complaint, filed in federal district court in the District of Columbia, alleges that in January 2020, NTRP invited Haywood to participate in a registered direct offering of shares. Before being told about the offering, Haywood expressly agreed not to trade on the material, nonpublic information he was about to receive. Notwithstanding this agreement, after receiving information about the offering, Haywood immediately sold more than 100,000 shares of NTRP stock. As alleged in the complaint, NTRP’s stock price dropped nearly 50 percent after the offering was announced. The complaint alleges that Haywood avoid losses of approximately $179,297.

FDIC Scrutinizing Voyager’s Marketing on Safety of Customer Deposit Accounts

Voyager Digital Ltd. marketed its deposit accounts for cryptocurrency purchases as safe, protected by the nation’s banking insurance system in the event of a failure.

This week, when the company tumbled into bankruptcy, customers learned they didn’t exactly have the protection they expected and a banking regulator began an inquiry, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Lawsuit accuses troubled crypto lender Celsius Network of fraud

A former investment manager at Celsius Network sued the crypto lender on Thursday, saying it used customer deposits to rig the price of its own crypto token and failed to properly hedge risk, causing it to freeze customer assets.

The complaint said Celsius ran a Ponzi scheme to benefit itself through “gross mismanagement of customer deposits,” and defrauded the plaintiff KeyFi Inc, run by the former manager Jason Stone, into providing services worth millions of dollars and refusing to pay for them.