Basing severity on dollars stolen is flawed - it should based on the percentage of the victims assets stolen. Taking $1 million fraudulently from Warren Buffett is not the same as taking it from the average pensioner.

She took money of retail investors as well. There is a podcast called "the dropout" which has featured done pretty ordinary people that lost their savings. Ok, we can judge them, just like we will judge all the nft & crypto victims, but the suffering is real.

Definitely this.

For many (though certainly not all) of the investors victimized by Holmes, I'm not terribly sympathetic. As implied by "qualified investor", if you write such a big check, it's sort of up to you to do the homework.

I do have some sympathy for people who got Theranos tests and were mislead about their efficacy, but on the charges of defrauding patients Holmes was found not guilty! (Similarly, I have some sympathy for employees who went to work at Theranos and ended up bullied and threatened by the company, as with Tyler Schultz, but they aren't represented by any of the criminal charges!)

The harshness of sentences has zero deterrence effect. This has been demonstrated many times. Also, if it had, then the US would be crime free, as it has the harshest system in the world.

The only thing that has a small deterrent effect is how likely a potential offender think they are of getting caught.

Have you studied this kind of crime specifically, and looked at specific sentencing terms, eg. 5 vs. 10 vs. 15 years? I'm guessing no, and more than likely there's no data available for this.

My understanding is that even in cases where deterrents are known to work poorly, there's still some effect. For example, with drug addicts, there are diminishing returns in as little as a couple days, but I think there was still SOME effect.

It just winds up being mostly pointless, because a weekend sentence works pretty much the same as eg. months to years or more. You should be careful about extrapolating from behavioral studies, and other crimes.

It's not just about deterrent IMO. I also care about justice, fairness, and making it not worth it to commit white collar crimes. If the sentence is not substantial, you've basically gotten away with it to me.

It's worth 1-5 years in prison to spend 5-10 years in luxury, being told how amazing you are. Maybe not for me, but it certainly is for a lot of people. A ton of white collar criminals end up better off for their crimes, if you're not harsh enough.

US doesn't have the harshest system in the world and harshness of sentences definitely has some deterrent effect.

This might be overly handwavy of me, but I struggle to see a scenario where a rationale Elizabeth Holmes thinks the expected value of what she did is positive if the standard sentence is 10 years, but thinks it's negative if the sentence is 65 years.

Maybe the takeaway is that criminals (and humans) aren't entirely rational, and 65 years is just a great "headline" for deterrence. But framing this as about deterring rational criminals strikes me as then putting a high burden of proof on the argument for 65 vs 10.

> “non-violent” criminals can do much more widespread damage individually than violent criminals are likely to

How did you come to that conclusion? It seems like a difficult argument to support.

In terms of human life, probably not, right? I mean hypothetically the investors could have gone on to spend their money on lifesaving ventures and charities but that seems like a roll of the dice.

Not saying this is the case for Holmes', but scams can definitely destroy people's lives. It's not just about being financially ruined - which isn't a small thing - but also the feeling of guilt associated with having fallen for the trick.

Are we allowed to include executives who lie about the dangers of tobacco, asbestos, climate change, or politicians and bureaucrats who lie about the evidence they use to justify wars, things of that nature -- all lies for profit which materially damaged others -- in the non-violent bucket to answer your question?

They may not not technically be criminals because the government and judicial system protect this class of people, so in the interest of liability let's not allege they committed any crimes, but in the context of the the question yes white-collar or non-violent "whoopsie daisies" can do much more widespread damage.

It does, I guess, technically answer my question in isolation.

In the context of the broader discussion here, though I find it unsatisfying -- Holmes was specifically found guilty of defrauding the investors, and (as far as I've seen) acquitted of defrauding the patients. I don't think the main punishment for tobacco, etc company execs should be based around, hypothetically, ripping off investors (actually I guess their investors don't feel ripped off in many cases).

The main victims, in the case of tobacco and asbestos, seem to be people who've essentially been poisoned. This ought to be considered a violent act in my opinion. Unfortunately the legal system seems to see it differently, so again you are correct, but again I'm left a bit unsatisfied...