This story is straight out of a movie.
On June 6, 2024, a federal court in San Francisco found Stephen Chamberlain and his boss, tech tycoon Mike Lynch, not guilty of inflating their company, Autonomy, before selling it to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
This was considered a lucky break by many, but apparently $11 billion in 2011 dollars wasn't an inflated number, according to the court.
Mike Lynch, once hailed as Britain's king of technology, has been cleared of charges alleging he orchestrated a fraud and conspiracy leading up to an $11 billion deal that turned into a costly albatross for Silicon Valley pioneer Hewlett Packard.
The not-guilty verdicts reached Thursday by a federal court jury in San Francisco followed an 11-week criminal trial that delved into the history of HP's 2011 acquisition of Autonomy, a business software that Lynch founded and then oversaw as CEO in Britain. HP at first celebrated the purchase as a huge coup that would propel the Palo Alto, California, company down a promising new path, but then quickly came to regret under its then-CEO Meg Whitman.
The jury acquitted Lynch on all 15 felony counts facing him.
So Lynch and Chamberlain went back to living their lives of luxury as usual, from sailing the Mediterranean on yachts to taking leisurely jogs in their own neighborhoods.
However, this leisure wouldn't last for long — it would last a mere two and a half months.
Here's what's unfolded over the past four days:
Stephen Chamberlain, Autonomy's former vice president of finance, who worked alongside chief executive Mr Lynch, was killed after being hit by a vehicle while out running on Saturday, his lawyer, Gary Lincenberg said.
Less than 48 hours later, Mr Lynch was among six tourists who went missing after a luxury yacht sank in a tornado off the coast of Sicily early on Monday.
Dude gets struck by a car during a jog near his home in Cambridgeshire (I'm sure he does this often and takes a similar route every time), and then his boss goes missing after his yacht sinks as a result of a Mediterranean tornado.
Move along now, everyone. Nothing to see here.
I'll leave this here:
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