Former Autonomy chief government Mike Lynch issued a press release Thursday following his acquittal of felony costs, ending a 13-year authorized battle with Hewlett-Packard that turned one in every of Silicon Valley’s greatest fraud instances. He was accused of falsely inflating revenues on the UK startup forward of Autonomy’s $11 billion sale to HP in 2011.
Commenting on the acquittal, Lynch (pictured above, left, when he appeared at TechCrunch Disrupt) mentioned in his assertion: “I’m elated with immediately’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 workforce for his or her tireless work on my behalf. I’m wanting 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 in opposition to him in relation to the 2011 acquisition.
The victory for Lynch is notable in gentle of the truth that within the US, in fiscal yr 2022, solely 0.4% of federal felony instances led to trial and acquittal, in line with the Pew Analysis Heart, and solely 12% of all wire fraud prosecutions resulted in acquittal.
Christopher Morvillo and Brian Heberlig, authorized counsel for Lynch, added in a press release: “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 dwelling to England to renew his life and proceed innovating.”
Lynch, 58, was beforehand extradited to the US, and put underneath home arrest and 24-hour surveillance forward of the trial. He lengthy maintained he was scapegoated by HP, claiming it botched the acquisition of Autonomy, and later mismanaged the corporate’s software program belongings.
Lynch made £500 million from the sale of Autonomy to HP. However solely a yr later, HP wrote down its funding by $8.8 billion, saying $5 billion of that write-down owed to practices employed by Autonomy’s earlier administration workforce that inflated Autonomy’s worth and misled potential consumers into believing the corporate was way more beneficial.
Prosecutors accused Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain, Autonomy’s former vp of finance, of illegally inflating revenues forward of the acquisition and hiding high-margin software program income 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 and marketing 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 Chamberlain, who was additionally on trial.
The US lawyer’s workplace in San Francisco mentioned: “We acknowledge and respect the decision. We want to thank the jury for its attentiveness to the proof the federal government offered on this case.”
Autonomy’s sale to HP was seen as a vindication of the UK’s booming tech scene, and the platform’s means to sift via unstructured databases was, on the time, considered as a manner for HP to rebuild its flat-lining {hardware} enterprise.
Lynch co-founded Autonomy in 1996 out of a specialist software program analysis group known as Cambridge Neurodynamics.
Awarded an OBE for providers to enterprise in 2006, Lynch turned 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.
