[HN Gopher] Goldman Sachs, Ozy Media and a $40M conference call ...
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Goldman Sachs, Ozy Media and a $40M conference call gone wrong
Author : jbegley
Score : 166 points
Date : 2021-09-27 01:57 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| moralestapia wrote:
| LOL, you can only laugh when you see this kind of story while the
| average joe struggles with life at just the slightest mistake.
|
| When I was a student (but under a contract nonetheless) I was
| once threatened with termination because I took off my shoes
| while at my desk on a Friday at around 6pm (everyone left at 4pm,
| but I wanted to finish something that bugged me the whole week).
| Another guy next to me noticed it (trust me, there was no foul
| smell ;)) and it filed a report on misbehavior. What ensued was
| one of the most bizarre episodes I ever experienced with regards
| to "corporate life" (although I was in academy but w/e).
|
| I got several emails from people that were somehow involved in
| that chain of command condemning the action; plus I had to go
| through two _serious conversations_ regarding the incident, one
| with my direct supervisor and another one with the director of
| the whole faculty (!), where he took his time to explain to me
| how no one would like to employ somebody who displays such
| unprofessional behavior, etcetera ... Turns out that, for some
| people, it is a big deal if you take off your shoes, while
| sitting at your desk, on your office, on a Friday night.
| -\\_(tsu)_ /-
|
| Fast forward to today and (quoting the great Mark Levine):
|
| _" The CEO of the company gave a potential investor a fake email
| address for a big customer, and then the COO digitally altered
| his voice to impersonate that customer on a call with the
| investor [...]"_
|
| but
|
| _" [...] the board decided not to investigate because ... they
| were satisfied that this was just a one-time thing, a little
| oopsie, everything else that the company does is completely
| aboveboard, and anyway no harm no foul"_
|
| Whew! We all play the same game, right? Just not under the same
| rules.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| When working at Scottrade, I got yelled at for downloading the
| source code to `touch`. (https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils
| /blob/master/src/touch...)
|
| Apparently it was a security violation, and I was warned never
| to do something so dangerous again.
| [deleted]
| ForHackernews wrote:
| I used to work as a cashier, and I once got written up because
| I was $20 short when I counted down my drawer at the end of a
| busy 8 hour shift. They told me I'd be fired if I was more than
| $10 off a second time.
| jessaustin wrote:
| I thought this sort of arrangement was pretty common for
| cashiers? If punishment weren't draconian business would
| cease. People I've known who've worked in retail and didn't
| seem to care at all about shoplifting have been very
| attentive to the receipts matching the till.
|
| Of course this arrangement seems unfair; this may be a good
| argument for going cashless.
| PakG1 wrote:
| This type of management, but taken to the extreme.
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/23/22399721/uk-post-
| office-s... People need to stop jumping to negative
| conclusions.
| OJFord wrote:
| > Fast forward to today and (quoting the great Mark [sic]
| Levine)
|
| A better (more apt) Matt Levine quote might've been about the
| recent story of a Softbank exec taking his shoes off and
| resting his feet on the lap of some speechless Fifa exec on a
| private plane.
|
| (I think it was repeated the next day or so in column on Monzo
| founder's similar anecdote about the same exec's toenail-
| picking, if you want to find it.)
| game_the0ry wrote:
| I appreciate that you have a sense of humor and positive
| attitude about this, but I do not. It pisses me off, and people
| in positions of high responsibility should reap the downside of
| high accountability.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| It's a bit early to say nothing will come of this. Google
| certainly has deep pockets and an incentive to push for
| prosecution, and indeed they have alerted the FBI.
| mattnewton wrote:
| If anyone sues, I would think it would be Goldman as they
| were the firm they attempted to defraud here, and they must
| know how to prosecute fraud like this very well.
|
| But, if they are holding a lot of equity in this company,
| they are also incentivized to brush it under the rug until
| they can offload their position. It wasn't clear to me if
| they had invested yet and were looking to invest more, or if
| they have no stake yet.
|
| If they don't have a stake they probably just won't take one
| after this due diligence revealed even more than they
| bargained about the company.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Goldman doesn't have much of an interest here; they'll
| surely keep their money away from this company, but without
| the deal going through, their damages are minimal (in fact,
| it might even saved them by showing how bad of an
| investment this would've been for them).
|
| Google, on the other hand, had one of their higher-ups
| impersonated to lie about platform statistics. I don't
| think they'll let this slide, if only to prevent other
| people from doing the same.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If anyone sues, I would think it would be Goldman as
| they were the firm they attempted to defraud here, and they
| must know how to prosecute fraud like this very well_
|
| The Board not only brushed off brazen fraud by the co-
| founders, its members went to the press to defend them.
| Minority investors, including employees with share awards,
| would have a case for damages.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| My takeaway is that the facility director clearly has nothing
| useful to do if they're having meetings over a shoeless person
| at 6pm, and probably should've been let go.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Most higher-ups in academia don't do much. But ssh, don't
| tell anybody ;).
| mvind wrote:
| "The president of the Ford Foundation, Mr. Walker, said in an
| email that he had confidence in Ozy. "We need new media companies
| to challenge the status quo, shake things up, and go deep on the
| issues that matter most," he said. "In an increasingly diverse
| world, it's no coincidence that a company with co-founders of
| Black and Indian descent would be so successful." Remember this
| is the sort person investing capital nowadays..
| hogFeast wrote:
| Not an investor. Never worked as an investor. Only worked for
| charities. Marc Lasry, however, is a very well-known investor.
|
| Investing and charity does seem to be merging in quite a
| puzzling way. Saying that this company has been "so successful"
| after the founders have been caught committing fraud (not in
| the legal sense) is inexplicable.
|
| I worked in finance. If this happened at a company that I
| recommended, I would have lost my job (I actually know a fund
| manager who had a well-publicised 5% position in a company that
| failed, they had institutional money only so the reaction was
| swift...50% drop in AUM, investors demanded they fire 75% of
| the analyst team...this does happen in finance). I guess not
| everyone has to play by those rules.
|
| Ironically, it sounds just like old media. Pay a few good 'ol
| boys to put out the stuff I like and agree with. I will lose
| all my money but...who cares?
| woodruffw wrote:
| The president of the Ford Foundation _might_ attend the same
| cocktail parties as the investment leadership at the US 's
| large banks, but you can rest easy knowing that (1) both are
| still very cool with fossil fuels, and (2) only the latter is
| investing any meaningful amount of capital.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| I'm glad someone is pointing this out. The article makes it
| sound like the accused company is wrapped up in a lot of social
| justice propaganda. Hucksters like this CEO know how to
| leverage woke messaging to their benefit. Woke is good for
| business.
|
| That their first instinct was to frame the excuse as empathy
| for an employee struggling with a "mental health episode" says
| it all. They know their audience.
|
| Their YouTube Channel [1] makes it immediately obvious they do
| not have anything close to a consistent viewership audience of
| millions. Anyone who invested in this should fire their entire
| due diligence staff. Existing investors are the main idiots
| here, with Goldman only redeeming themselves at the last
| minute. YouTube doesn't have much skin (no pun intended) in the
| game. Nobody is gonna pursue this further because it will look
| bad.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/OZY
| CPLX wrote:
| Holy shit they have multiple videos with _zero_ views and
| tons more with less than 10 or less than 100 views.
|
| For a company that claims to have 25 million newsletter
| subscribers?
| pessimizer wrote:
| They're just vapid and corporate, and vapid and corporate
| means a lot of warmed over cultural studies buzzwords.
| Raising capital based on wokeness is a no-lose situation (ask
| Theranos.) As an investor, you can count your investment as
| pseudo-charity work in your press releases and reports.
| concinds wrote:
| It _has_ to be some kind of money laundering scam, or other
| fraud, right?
|
| Surely, no matter how out of touch they are, these old
| investors understand that not a single teen and college
| studens actually watches Ted Talks every day, reads Vox,
| listens to the NYT Daily on their way to classes, and has the
| Open Society Foundations RSS feed on their phone, right? They
| understand no one _actually_ gives a F** about "media
| companies that challenge the status quo, shake things up, and
| go deep on the issues that matter most". Come on! The most
| "media" they watch is Linus Media Group, the Daily Show, and
| John Oliver. Only slightly exaggerating. It's _impossible_
| for them to be this out of touch!
| sharadov wrote:
| Youtube notified the FBI and they are investigating, I don't
| think this is going to die down as the powers be expected it to.
| [deleted]
| treebog wrote:
| https://archive.is/zMvoW
| reginold wrote:
| Wow. "Hey we tried to rip you off like no tomorrow, but got
| caught. No harm no foul right"?
|
| From the article: "When YouTube learned that someone had
| apparently impersonated one of their executives at a business
| meeting, its security team started an investigation, the company
| confirmed to me. The inquiry didn't get far before a name
| emerged: Within days, Mr. Watson had apologized profusely to
| Goldman Sachs, saying the voice on the call belonged to Samir
| Rao, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Ozy, according
| to the four people."
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _In his apology to Goldman Sachs and in an email to me on
| Friday, Mr. Watson attributed the incident to a mental health
| crisis and shared what he said were details of Mr. Rao's
| diagnosis. "Samir is a valued colleague and a close friend,"
| Mr. Watson said. "I'm proud that we stood by him while he
| struggled, and we're all glad to see him now thriving again."
| He added that Mr. Rao took time off from work after the call
| and is now back at Ozy. Mr. Rao did not reply to requests for
| comment._
|
| WTF?! This is immaterial on the company's value (it may be
| successful despite), but how is the individual in question
| still employed at the company?
|
| I've gone through some low points, but never have I attempted
| to impersonate another company's executive in order certify
| traffic claims and secure funding.
|
| Jesus.
| blitzar wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity_defense
|
| _> The notion of temporary insanity argues that a defendant
| was insane during the commission of a crime, but they later
| regained their sanity after the criminal act was carried out.
| This legal defense is commonly used to defend individuals
| that have committed crimes of passion. The defense was first
| successfully used by U.S. Congressman Daniel Sickles of New
| York in 1859 after he had killed his wife 's lover, Philip
| Barton Key._
|
| Of course the first successfull use would be a politician.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Yes, but a (even temporary, which is rarer than TV would
| lead you to believe) insanity plea typically requires
| institution at a mental health care facility.
|
| It certainly doesn't just place the individual back in
| their old job.
| reginold wrote:
| How is this immaterial? The two co-founders tried to defraud
| an investor.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| IMHO, attempting to defraud an investor demonstrates a
| complete lack of ethics.
|
| It does not necessarily follow that your company is
| inherently fraudulent or worthless. Lots of terrible people
| run financially solid companies.
|
| Would I invest a dime? Hell no. But it doesn't mean that
| it's not a valuable company.
| elliekelly wrote:
| If it's a solid company run by ethically challenged
| people then the board can (and should) fire the terrible
| people and replace them with better people. If the
| company's only "value" comes from the terrible people
| being in charge then it is indeed a terrible company.
| vkou wrote:
| > but how is the individual in question still employed at the
| company?
|
| The company is worthless unless the founders realize their
| vision, and investors who were already suckered into funding
| it don't want to rock the boat, because it will make their
| entire investment evaporate.
| blitzar wrote:
| But did they still do the deal?
|
| Just how thirsty are Goldmans to do deals in this space is the
| thing I want to know.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| That's answered in the article.
| blitzar wrote:
| They 'walked away' and then the deal got done 2 months
| later - there are no details on who did the deal.
| [deleted]
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Hint: Goldman's definition of "this space" is much more about
| the "who" than the "what"
| pranavjoneja wrote:
| Bloomberg's Matt Levine has an interesting take:
|
| > Here's another thing about being a private company. What if
| this had worked? What if Goldman hadn't noticed anything unusual
| and had coughed up the $40 million? Wouldn't Goldman have been
| embarrassed when this story came out? Well, no, because this
| story never would have come out! Even if someone had told Goldman
| after the fact "hey that call with YouTube was fake," what would
| they have done about it? They could call Ozy and demand their
| money back but presumably Ozy spent it. They could sue, but how
| much would they be able to recover? Once you've been tricked into
| investing in a high-flying startup, the only rational move is to
| hope that they succeed, clean up their act and go public at a
| higher valuation. You'd never go around saying "we were tricked";
| that just destroys value.
|
| > Similarly, if you are an investor and board member of a hot
| startup, and you find out that the co-founder impersonated a
| customer to try to trick someone into investing, what are your
| incentives? If you make a big deal about it and throw around
| words like "fraud," it will be hard for the startup ever to raise
| money again, which might make your own investment worthless. If
| you say, meh, unfortunate one-time event, no harm no foul, then
| maybe the company's vision will end up working out and you'll be
| able to sell at a profit. If you invest in a startup you are
| buying an option; your goal, as a board member, is not to
| extinguish the option value too soon. Just, you know, let it
| ride, see where this goes.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-27/impost...
| JackFr wrote:
| Impersonating someone while soliciting investment is fraud, pure
| and simple.
|
| I can't believe Goldman would even take their calls after that --
| not that Goldman aren't greedy bastards, but that a company that
| pulls crap like that are very unlikely to be a good investment in
| the long run.
| reginold wrote:
| Help me understand, what is so damaging in YouTube data that you
| risk the entire company to hide it?
|
| The idea is all the traffic is fake. Does that somehow get
| exposed by the YouTube call in a way that otherwise is not
| possible?
| AJ007 wrote:
| It's all bot or paid traffic. Never heard of them before this
| article. This was a good quote:
|
| "I've never heard an explanation of Ozy that made sense to me,"
| said Brian Morrissey, the former editor in chief of Digiday, a
| publication covering digital media and the tech industry, who
| now writes The Rebooting, a newsletter focused on media
| businesses. He said he was struck by the company's claims,
| adding, "then you do the gut check, and never once in my life
| has a piece of content from Ozy crossed into my world
| organically."
| htrp wrote:
| Basically a company using a "mental health" issue to cover for
| the one time they got caught committing ad-fraud.
| hangonhn wrote:
| Yeah. That really, really did not sit well with me. The use of
| mental health care issues as an excuse for some immoral,
| unethical behavior is really quite offensive. There are so, so,
| so many people who have mental health care issues who do not
| commit fraud nor behave immorally.
| gpayan wrote:
| 2 ex-Goldman Sachs employees attempting to defraud Goldman Sachs,
| who in return takes no actions. "Good try guys, honestly everyone
| on the team here at GS would have done the same thing. But you
| know that, you worked here."
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| Statement from the CEO:
| https://twitter.com/carloswatson/status/1442351771544735749
| devrand wrote:
| > Why was Ozy trying to mislead Goldman about its relationship
| with YouTube? > We were not.
|
| WHAT!? Even if I were to accept the mental health claim, that's
| only going to cover the lapse in judgement. I don't think it's
| reasonable to deflect on their being an intent to mislead
| Goldman by literally impersonating a senior YouTube executive
| to boast about your company. Simply saying "we were not" is
| really not a defense here.
| cs702 wrote:
| So, one of Ozy's top two executives impersonated a senior YouTube
| executive, apparently using voice-modification technology, to
| answer questions in a due diligence phone call initiated by
| Goldman Sachs, who was considering investing $40M in the company.
|
| First of all, _wow_. That takes a lot -- _a lot_ -- of chutzpah.
| And a lot of arrogance too.
|
| Second, Ozy's board of directors described this reckless con as a
| "mistake." Apparently the impersonator is still at Ozy. (Wait...
| _What?_ )
|
| Third, I'm reminded of the later stages of the residential
| mortgage market bubble, in which the zeitgeist was captured by
| the phrase "extend and pretend." The zeitgeist now may be best
| described as "fake it and pretend."
|
| Again, _wow_.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Shades of Theranos with this one. It's so sad that hard
| working, smart technologists struggle through and at best maybe
| make a decent living at a good tech company, yet smooth-talking
| phonies like these guys and Elizabeth Holmes and Adam Neumann
| just get money thrown at them and can never fail. Why? Because
| they wear turtlenecks and have the right prestigious college
| names on their resume?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _hard working, smart technologists struggle through and at
| best maybe make a decent living at a good tech company_
|
| Woah woah woah.
|
| If we want to claim that _any_ tech salary is hard working
| and struggling, then I suggest you spend a summer digging
| ditches for the DOT, coal mining, or working in a factory.
|
| In the US, programmers make about 2.5x the median salary
| (2019) [0]. The entire US median in 2019 was $35,000.
|
| So remember to look down for perspective too, not just up.
|
| [0] https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/central.html
| https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-
| programm...
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Implying that people can't be hard working because "look,
| there's this other job that seems like it's harder" is
| just... I don't even know what.
|
| As for the struggling part, if you control for cost of
| living the picture is going to look a _lot_ different.
| dannylandau wrote:
| A bit off topic, but why do people conflate Elizabeth Holmes
| with Adam Neumann (and Travis Kalanick), completely different
| issues, one is fraud and the other is just a failed IPO that
| included some hyperbole, nothing more. No comparison.
| CPLX wrote:
| There were a few things in the WeWork story that were way
| closer to the fraud line than you're implying here
| including circular revenue and self-dealing.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Arguably Neumann was a fraud, he just got away with it.
| WeWork's books were thoroughly cooked, and he managed to
| extract an inappropriate amount of wealth from it via his
| role, up to and including making the company lease land
| from him, and (attempting) to force the company to license
| its own brand from him personally.
| sharadov wrote:
| Neumann was a complete conman, and he's the smarter one
| because he got away with a lot of money , while Holmes is a
| psychopath who hopefully will end up with a long prison
| sentence.
| ativzzz wrote:
| I'm so jaded that I think she will get off scott free
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Adam Neumann is not Elizabeth Holmes, but there is more to
| his story than "a failed IPO that included some hyperbole".
| ryandrake wrote:
| I lump them together because their primary skills are charm
| and persuasion rather than hands-on subject matter
| expertise. To me, it doesn't matter whether the end result
| turns out to be fraud or incompetence, they get ahead of
| honesty and competence by being phony smooth-talking
| salesmen. Like a role playing character that puts all their
| skill points into "Charisma" and nothing else.
|
| And it's not just high profile entrepreneurs. Everyone
| knows people like this, they're all around us, climbing the
| corporate ladder. Mediocre performers, but boy can they
| "look the part", flash a big gorgeous smile, and talk in
| ways that sound pleasing to leadership but are ultimately
| empty words.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Mediocre performers, but boy can they "look the part",
| flash a big gorgeous smile, and talk in ways that sound
| pleasing to leadership but are ultimately empty words.
|
| Coincidentally, this also characterizes Ozy's content,
| which is unbelievably vapid and safe, but delivered with
| an unearned tone of gravitas. At least TED(x) talks were
| sometimes good because of the sheer number of them. Ozy
| content is never good.
| chiefgeek wrote:
| Right! And go ahead and try to unsubscribe! Impossible.
| danso wrote:
| Free to read link:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/business/media/ozy-media-...
| malkia wrote:
| Before reading this, I was really thinking of Ozzfest and Ozzy! -
| lol - I must read the article fully tonight, because I was
| laughing half-way through, and could not comprehend fully wtf was
| going on... this is too much
| wiredfool wrote:
| I'm thinking giant statue in the dessert, lost and forgotten,
| like tears in the rain.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Incidentally, guess what made today's _Money Stuff_ newsletter?
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-27/impost...
| blitzar wrote:
| _> I am appalled, sure, but honestly I also admire it a bit. I
| feel like there is some threshold of absolute shamelessness
| that most companies cannot even aspire to, but if you reach it
| then either you blow up in short order or you take over the
| world. I'll probably be working for Ozy in a year._
| tweedledee wrote:
| My only encounters with Ozy have been overly glowing unlabeled
| promotional articles on various up and coming tech entrepreneurs.
| themgt wrote:
| Little gem from a (paywalled) WaPo story a few years ago:
|
| _[Hillary] Clinton herself is here at Ozy Fest, in a flowing
| sky-blue caftan and white linen pants, looking like she was
| choppered in from East Hampton. For 45 minutes, she is the
| president of this little plot of Central Park, astride the
| ritziest Zip code in New York City, a bubble within a bubble
| within a bubble. Her interlocutor is billionaire philanthropist
| Laurene Powell Jobs, the sixth richest woman on the planet and a
| primary investor in Ozy Media, whose name comes from the Percy
| Bysshe Shelley poem 'Ozymandias'_
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/inside-ozy-fe...
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| Jobs also has put money into The Atlantic, Axios, Mother Jones,
| and ProPublica. None of these are cash cows. So maybe she
| doesn't care so much about traffic numbers.
| jessaustin wrote:
| "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal
| wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands
| stretch far away."
| IceHegel wrote:
| Their view botting is _insanely_ obvious. I found these videos in
| 30 seconds, all over 1m views and less than 20 comments.
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdazNWPT-aM
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waZlYPzMJ28
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWg6kF-y6d4
| jonas21 wrote:
| It's not necessarily bots. They could just be buying views with
| ads.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I'm surprised YouTube doesn't crack down on this. On the other
| hand, they might have just asked for a closer inspection.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > While the explanation satisfied the company's board, which did
| not formally investigate, it did not answer all the questions the
| incident raised.
|
| I struggle to understand how these board members think they're
| fulfilling their duties. When you learn management is committing
| crimes in order to raise funds it doesn't seem reasonable to then
| take management's explanation at face value after they've been
| caught.
| jrumbut wrote:
| If someone is robbing Peter to pay Paul, Paul doesn't have much
| motivation to stop the robbery.
| _pmf_ wrote:
| > I struggle to understand how these board members think
| they're fulfilling their duties.
|
| A help into their accounts might help here.
| e1g wrote:
| Counter-intuitively, the board _is_ fulfilling the duty of
| loyalty by protecting the business. Matt Levine puts it well
| [1] - What if this had worked? What if Goldman
| hadn't noticed anything unusual and had coughed up the $40
| million? Wouldn't Goldman have been embarrassed when this story
| came out? Well, no, because this story never would have come
| out! [...] Once you've been tricked into investing in a high-
| flying startup, the only rational move is to hope that they
| succeed, clean up their act and go public at a higher
| valuation. You'd never go around saying "we were tricked"; that
| just destroys value. Similarly, if you are an
| investor and board member of a hot startup, and you find out
| that the co-founder impersonated a customer to try to trick
| someone into investing, what are your incentives? If you make a
| big deal about it and throw around words like "fraud," it will
| be hard for the startup ever to raise money again, which might
| make your own investment worthless. If you say, meh,
| unfortunate one-time event, no harm no foul, then maybe the
| company's vision will end up working out and you'll be able to
| sell at a profit. If you invest in a startup you are buying an
| option; your goal, as a board member, is not to extinguish the
| option value too soon. Just, you know, let it ride, see where
| this goes.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-27/impost...
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think it's important to remember that some (most?) of what
| Levine writes is tongue-in-cheek. There Levine discusses the
| practical consequences and board's incentives but in no way
| is he saying the board has fulfilled their legal obligations.
| Not even facetiously.
| e1g wrote:
| Absolutely! It's a humorous take but still presents an
| excellent way to frame the situation through the lens of
| perverse incentives of board members of a private company
| in a smoke-and-mirrors industry such as media.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| What are the odds that they outsourced youtube views to view
| farms in third world countries?
| CPLX wrote:
| Besides the likely felony of the call impersonation, this part
| jumps out too: In 2017, BuzzFeed News reported that Ozy had been
| among the publishers buying web traffic from "low-quality
| sources," companies using systems that caused articles to pop
| open under a reader's browser without the reader's knowledge.
|
| They aren't elaborating but it seems clear that the company has
| been buying fake traffic for everything they do, which is a core
| issue.
| Igelau wrote:
| > "Samir is a valued colleague and a close friend," Mr. Watson
| said. "I'm proud that we stood by him while he struggled, and
| we're all glad to see him now thriving again."
|
| Wow, that positive spin is a _stretch_.
| duxup wrote:
| Wasn't it great how Sunny stood by Elizabeth Holmes while they
| stood to make money by lying?
|
| /s
| CPLX wrote:
| It's way worse than that even. The CEO is the one that provided
| what's obviously a fake email address for the Youtube
| executive.
|
| When you read this paragraph the only plausible scenario is
| that the CEO was actively involved in this whole idea of faking
| the conference call:
|
| _After the meeting, someone on the Goldman Sachs side reached
| out to Mr. Piper, not through the Gmail address that Mr. Watson
| had provided before the meeting, but through Mr. Piper's
| assistant at YouTube. That's when things got weird._
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