Former Autonomy chief govt Dr Mike Lynch issued an announcement Thursday following his acquittal of felony prices, ending a 13-year authorized battle with Hewlett-Packard which grew to become certainly one of Silicon Valley’s greatest fraud instances. He had been accused of falsely inflating revenues on the UK startup forward of its $11 billion sale to HP in 2011.
Commenting on the acquittal, Dr Lynch (pictured on the left above when he appeared at TechCrunch Disrupt) mentioned: “I’m elated with right now’s verdict and grateful to the jury for his or her consideration to the info during the last ten weeks. My deepest thanks go to my authorized group for his or her tireless work on my behalf. I’m trying ahead to returning to the UK and getting again to what I like most: my household and innovating in my discipline.”
After a 12-week trial, the entrepreneur was cleared of 15 counts of fraud and conspiracy that had been introduced towards him in relation to the 2011 acquisition.
The victory for Lynch is notable in gentle of the truth that within the US, solely 0.4% of federal felony instances (in fiscal yr 2022, in accordance with the Pew Analysis Heart) led to trial and acquittal, and solely 12% of all prosecutions beneath the lead cost of wire fraud lead to acquittal.
Christopher Morvillo and Brian Heberlig, Authorized Counsel for Dr Lynch, added in an announcement: “We’re thrilled with the jury’s verdict, which displays a convincing rejection of the federal government’s profound overreach on this case. The proof offered at trial demonstrated conclusively that Mike Lynch is harmless. This verdict closes the e book on a relentless 13-year effort to pin HP’s well-documented ineptitude on Dr Lynch. Fortunately, the reality has lastly prevailed. We thank Dr Lynch for his belief all through this ordeal and hope that he can now return residence to England to renew his life and proceed innovating.”
Lynch, 58, was beforehand extradited to the US, and put beneath home arrest beneath 24-hour surveillance forward of the trial. He had lengthy maintained that he had been scapegoated by HP, claiming it had botched the acquisition of Autonomy, and later mismanaged the corporate’s software program property.
Mr Lynch made £500M from the sale of Autonomy to HP. However solely a yr later, HP wrote down its funding by $8.8B and put $5B of the worth right down to Autonomy’s so-called inflation of revenues, it claimed on the time.
Prosecutors accused Lynch and Chamberlain of illegally inflating revenues previous to the acquisition and hiding high-margin software program revenues inside unprofitable {hardware} gross sales.
Within the trial, Lynch efficiently argued that he had not been concerned in accounting and contract issues, as a substitute specializing in technical and advertising points.
Though unsuccessfully arguing that the case must be heard within the UK, resulting in his extradition, the US jury exonerated Lynch on all counts, together with Stephen Chamberlain, Autonomy’s former vice-president of finance, who was additionally on trial.
The US legal professional’s workplace in San Francisco mentioned: “We acknowledge and respect the decision. We wish to thank the jury for its attentiveness to the proof the federal government offered on this case.”
Autonomy’s sale to HP had been scene as a vindication of the UK’s booming tech scene, and the platform’s means to sift by way of unstructured databases was, on the time, seen as a means for HP to rebuild its flat-lining {hardware} enterprise.
Lynch co-founded Autonomy in 1996 out of a specialist software program analysis group referred to as Cambridge Neurodynamics.
Awarded an OBE for companies to enterprise in 2006, Lynch grew to become a UK authorities adviser who sat on the boards of the BBC and the British Library, based the Invoke Capital VC and invested in breakout cyber safety firm Darktrace.
