It’s been more than a decade since British tech entrepreneur Michael Lynch sold his software company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion. Now. he’s facing the risk of serious prison time.
The blockbuster deal has landed him in criminal court alongside his former vice president of finance, Stephen Chamberlain, with each facing more than a dozen counts of wire fraud and other charges. Prosecutors say that, through a string of conference calls, news releases and emails, they presented a rosy picture of Autonomy at a time it actually was tanking, duping HP into massively overpaying in the process.
