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How the Inventors of Dragon Speech Recognition Technology Lost Everything
First time accepted submitter cjsm writes "James and Janet Baker were the inventors of Dragon Systems' speech recognition software, and after years of work, they created a multimillion dollar company. At the height of the tech boom, with investment offers rolling in, they turned to Goldman Sachs for financial advice. For a five million dollar fee, Goldman hooked them up with Lernout & Hauspie, the Belgium speech recognition company. After consultations with Goldman Sachs, the Bakers traded their company for $580 million in Lernout & Hauspie stock. But it turned out Lernout & Hauspie was involved in cooking their books and went bankrupt. Dragon was sold in a bankruptcy auction to Scansoft, and the Bakers lost everything. Goldman and Sachs itself had decided against investing in Lernout & Hauspie two years previous to this because they were lying about their Asian sales. The Bakers are suing for one billion dollars."
They are NOT.
I think the icing on the cake is the fee of 5 mil to point them to a known fraudster.
Talk about the ultimate troll move. That surpasses being Rick Rolled.
I thought Goldman Sachs were the good guys?
They are! That's why the Hope & Change President decided to put change on hold and continue the long-standing tradition of stuffing the White House with Goldman alums and associates and sending administration people back.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Insightful? Almost every purported author of the Bible was at the lowest strung of society, many having been martyred. Exceptions include David, Solomon and Moses. The first two have some not so flattering things written about them and Moses was leader of a bunch of desert dwellers.
You fail to mention the current Secretary of the Treasury was deeply involved in those decisions.
I met the Bakers around 2002 at a neighborhood party and heard this story. At that time, Goldman's excuse was "L&H lied to us." However, given that a couple Wall Street Journal reporters exposed the fraud mostly by making some phone calls, it was clear that Goldman had done little work. I wish the Bakers the best of luck.
That kind of stuff happens when you have free markets.
When you have "free markets" Goldman Sachs doesn't get bailed out. You can't have it both ways - blame the free market when cronyism is the real culprit.
Do you have ESP?
But the bailout required the relatively unregulated investment banks to become commercial banks, members of FDIC, and accept regulation. The Federal Reserve does act as lender of last resort for commercial banks (who do have to be members of FDIC), but had no authorization to lend money to investment banks. I think that's what he was talking about.
I'm actually working on a project related to this topic. For general info, one can look up every bank, bank holding company, saving and loan company, credit union etc., with any business in the US, at Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council's (FFIEC). You can see who owns who, who bought who, etc.
The Council is a formal interagency body empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards, and report forms for the federal examination of financial institutions by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and to make recommendations to promote uniformity in the supervision of financial institutions. In 2006, the State Liaison Committee (SLC) was added to the Council as a voting member. The SLC includes representatives from the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS), the American Council of State Savings Supervisors (ACSSS), and the National Association of State Credit Union Supervisors (NASCUS).
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
The corruption is far, far greater ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Birkenfeld
In October 2001, Birkenfeld began working at UBS in Geneva, Switzerland, handling private banking, primarily for clients located in the United States. In 2005, he learned that UBS's secret dealings with American customers violated an agreement the bank had reached with the IRS.
He resigned from UBS in October 2005 and provided written whistleblower complaints to Peter Kurer, Head Counsel for UBS, and other UBS senior executives regarding the illegal practices of U.S. cross-border business.
He is the first person to expose what has become a multi-billion dollar international tax fraud scandal over Swiss private banking. Despite his unprecedented, extensive and voluntary cooperation, and registering as an IRS whistleblower, Birkenfeld is the only U.S. citizen to be sentenced to jail as a result of the scandal.