Sam Bankman-Fried. Elizabeth Holmes. Aiden Pleterski.
They are young, ambitious and terribly convincing.
So convincing that investors who believed in them suffered significant losses by entrusting their funds to these individuals’ now collapsed businesses:
$8 billion missing from Bankman-Fried’s FTX.
$121 million in investor losses from Holmes’ Theranos.
Allegedly $25 million owed to 119 creditors who had a 70-30 split ‘deal’ with the self-proclaimed crypto-king, Pleterski.
FTX was the second largest crypto exchange platform evaluated at $32bn just last year, and founder Bankman-Fried is currently facing fraud charges. The 30-year-old denies that he had committed fraud and says he is merely not as competent as he thought himself to be.
Holmes’ Theranos dissolved in 2018, when it was discovered that the Edison machine, falsely claimed to be capable of diagnosing hundreds of diseases ( ie, cancer & diabetes etc) with a few drops of blood, simply did not work. Holmes was 19 when she dropped out of Stanford and started the company.
Pleterski, a 23-year-old who drove luxury vehicles, flew on private jets and rented a lakefront mansion for $45,000 monthly, told the media that he was ‘just a kid’ when his business went bankrupt. The insinuation here? Pleterski doesn’t think he himself should take the blame but rather, those who gave millions to a ‘kid’ to help them ‘invest’ are the ones who made a bad decision.
Ultimately, the bottom line is clearly stated by the judge who handed Holmes a 11-year sentence: ‘It is okay to fail, but it is NOT okay to commit fraud.’
News-plus.ca 