UPDATED: May 25, 2016

The fraud formula for why venture capital funded startups are underperforming post IPO or acquisition.

Shareholders may want to hang on to this slide about the Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon’s Acclarent, as it seems JNJ Executive Gary Pruden is really putting NEA general partner, ExploraMed founder, Acclarent Co-Founder Josh Makower’s The Art Of Innovation, which is linked to federal healthcare fraud, to the test.

SEC & JNJ Shareholders might have interest in this slide.

Ohh or the manipulation of facts. Did Johnson & Johnson executives really just tell shareholders that medical device under-penetration of the market is the problem? Nope, notoriously, knowingly and willingly purchasing medical device fraud is the problem.  False projections to give the appearance of hypergrowth is not a sustainable sales model, it’s fraud.

January 30, 2016

The site under The Sociopathic Business Model™ often states that fraud costs employees their jobs, consumers & patients their health or lives, and investors or shareholders billions.  A point, not lost on activist investor Daniel O’Keefe of Artisan Partners, who notes Johnson & Johnson’s ROI on the $150 billion spent on medical device acquisitions isn’t generating profit growth and costing the company in the public image and legal department.  The concept that O’Keefe, as an investor in Johnson & Johnson, dances around but never says is that Johnson & Johnson does not know the difference between a pharmaceutical business model and medical device business model, especially as it relates to the company’s many frauds, and it will continue to cost the company and shareholders. Bottom line, venture capital fraud in startup medical devices is killing Johnson & Johnson.  All O’Keefe really needs to unseat Johnson & Johnson Worldwide President & CEO Alex Gorsky and his $25 million a year compensation is right HERE.  You’re welcome and I’m available if you should need a consultant for a Board presentation.

Read the full story here including O’Keefe’s letter on Qmed–>J&J Pressured to Spin-Off Medical Device Business

Update: May 26, 2016

Readers of Killing My Career could easily predict venture capital funded startup healthcare @theranos fraud. pic.twitter.com/2XowRoJ84X

— KillingMyCareer (@MelaynaLokosky) May 26, 2016

Theranos faces a class action lawsuit for deceptively marketing blood testing.

Update: May 12, 2016

Theranos’ COO retires as the troubled bio-tech startup overhauls its organizational structure https://t.co/H428VhdekW

— Technolopy (@technolopypro) May 12, 2016

Theranos President & COO, Sunny Balwani “decides” to “retire.” That’s precious, pending a federal investigation, he “decided” to “retire.” Nope, CMS is gunning for Balwani and founder Elizabeth Holmes to prevent them from participating in CMS (Medicare/Medicaid) contracts for two years, similar to what happened to Synthes executives in 2011. Meaning no healthcare company would hire them interested in insurance reimbursement. That’s that equivalent to getting burned in the industry.  It’s about time. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out Sunny!

Update: April 19, 2016

VC funded Theranos a subject of a criminal investigation, just like NEA funded startup Acclarent acquired by #JNJ https://t.co/41xBCiAAgO

— KillingMyCareer (@MelaynaLokosky) April 19, 2016

April 14, 2016

This site often writes about venture capital (VC)-funded startup fraud that costs employees their jobs, consumers and patients their safety or lives, and post-IPO or acquisition long-term shareholders & taxpayers billions while VCs make 8-10 times their initial investment back; and, this fraud cycle is encouraged, replicated and rewarded in the industry, better known as The Sociopathic Business Model™.

This week, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in an unprecedented move, proposed banning VC funded startup Theranos’s CEO Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos’s president Sunny Balwani for two years after learning that the company did not fix what regulators referred to as major problems within the laboratories.  This is a great start! CMS prevented costly fraud and sent a very scary message to VCs.

Theranos was approved for one test yet was fraudulently offering 250 tests which means the sales projections (in part, how the company valuations are determined) were based on the company selling all 250 tests; and in turn eventually getting reimbursed by Medicare/Medicaid and then private health insurance.  Reimbursement is what would make the startup attractive for an IPO or acquisition.   Regardless if Holmes is removed from the company, the company won’t be able to support their $9 billion valuation because they can’t sell all 250 tests but only one test. CMS caught on to fraud before they & taxpayers paid for it, which is unique, thanks in part to what they learned from another venture capital-funded startup Acclarent which was sold to Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon and not surprisingly underperforming post-acquisition due to healthcare fraud, and exposing that fraud is known as The MMpiHer Method™.

CMS trying to impose a $10,000 a day fine until the Theranos is compliant is like the rest of us paying a penny a day for some nuisance. Taking Holmes out of the game is a good start (and this isn’t the usual Silicon Valley sexism this is just straight up fraud) and, she should be banned for life, not just two years.  CMS, unlike SEC who clearly have no interest in preventing fraud,  also need to go after the venture capital #BoardWhores because that leads to #GodsOfFrauds.

Noticeably absent and a RED FLAG is that Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is missing from the Board and Balwani remains while the company is not short on former government officials:

Sunny Balwani: President and COO – Director

Riley P. Bechtel – Director

William H. Foege

William H. Frist

Henry A. Kissinger

Richard Kovacevich

James N. Mattis – Director

Sam Nunn

William J. Perry

Gary Roughead

George P. Shultz

Theranos Venture Capital:

ATA Ventures

Continental Ventures

Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ)

Tako Ventures

The Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust

Not until venture capital firms are held accountable for funding startup fraud, from the healthcare industry to the tech industry, can we expect to see positive change. In the meantime, Theranos VCs potentially losing hundreds of millions might be what’s needed to get Silicon Valley to stop funding fraud and it’s certainly helping the rest of us take the billion dollar blinders off of companies like Theranos and (perhaps Uber) and see them for what they really are: fraud.

Click here for more on understanding the VC-funded startup healthcare sales model

Click here for more information on Medicare/Medicaid & private health insurance as it relates to fraud

March 2, 2016

Citizen Petition & The Medical Information Working Group funded by medical device makers and shells used to protect the corrupt industry and not employees, consumers, or patients all at taxpayer expense.

The Medical Information Working Group funded by pharma and medical device makers, who are they really protecting?

If you, are like me, tired of Howard Root, I apologize this was sent to as a tip, and it’s timely so and links quite a lot together.

The medical device industry as this site has pointed out,  is famous for misappropriating, in a purposeful, false or deceptive way, patient, health and taxpayer advocacy groups for the community, when in fact, they’re shells for the corrupt medical device & pharma industry to try and manipulate laws for their benefit at the expense of patients, consumers, and taxpayers.   These are my personal favorites:

• Citizen Petition, a group of citizens working to cut taxes….for the wealthy venture capitalist who fund the startup medical device industry.
• The Medical Information Working Group defending First Amendment rights….for executives of the medical device and pharmaceutical companies to try and evade accountability while fraudulently off-label marketing.

So, when Citizen Petition  and  The Medical Information Working Group came together to defend people like NEA funded ExploraMed incubated startup Acclarent purchased by Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon then, CEO William (Bill) Facteau (currently CEO of startup EarLens) and VP of Sales & Training Patrick (Pat) Fabian (currently COO of startup NxThera) and Vascular Solutions CEO Howard Root, it raised more than a red flag.

VSI CEO Howard Root used The First Amendment when the FDA charged him with conspiracy where he was recently acquitted of all criminal charges (which is not the same as innocent or not guilty) and previously paid $520,000 in a civil settlement with DOJ (which is not the same as an outright dismissal of all charges). What’s even more obscene, is that Root, who is also an attorney,  in a move that was both inconsistent & contradicted his own language to action per The Sociopathic Business Model, Selective Tolerance A: hired an attorney to unsuccessfully try and take away my First Amendment Rights, in what feels like an attempt to threaten & intimidate me into silencing the truth. That, as you can see,  did not work out well for him. 

Who would want medical device executives to have the ability to place blame and without shame, remorse, guilt or accountability while manipulating facts all protected by the First Amendment? Surely, it wouldn’t be the employees who’ve experienced layoffs due to off-label  promotion fraud, and surely it wouldn’t be consumers or patients harmed or killed by off-label promotion fraud, and I couldn’t imagine shareholders would approve this tactic, and why would  taxpayers, who keep footing the bill for all the industry’s off-label promotion fraud, support Citizen Petition  and  The Medical Information Working Group? They wouldn’t.  

Facteau and Fabian were, on April 9, 2015, arrested and indicted on 18 counts of fraud.  And, as previously explained, I am a former medical device rep from June 2007  for NEA-funded, ExploraMed incubated, startup Acclarent that sold of Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon for $785 million in January of 2010, where I was wrongfully terminated in January 2011. And, I know, the First Amendment does not protect fraud.  The device in question the Relieva Stratus Microflow Spacer:

• What might be the first time in U.S. history, a company fraudulently obtained the 510 (k) approval (the device did not work as approved with saline) nor was it designed or intended for saline, it was designed for suspension steroid Kenalog-40
• Stratus Microflow Spacer, also,  did not work with Kenalog-40, as the drug must be injected into viable tissue and not a device, reps did not know this; but, Johnson & Johnson was aware, stopped, the almost completed study in November 2011, and sold the device up until they decided, while served a federal subpoena, to pull the product from the U.S. market in May of 2013, and finally from the international market late last year.
• At the bottom of this site is a countdown to:  USA v. Facteau et al Massachusetts District Court, Case No. 1:15-cr-10076, the criminal trial of William (Bill) Facteau. Facteau is represented by Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati  and  Skadden, Arps Slate, Meagher, & Flom, has a great interest in Facteau.  The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sara Miron Bloom and Patrick Callahan of the District of Massachusetts with the assistance of Trial Attorney Ross Goldstein of the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch in Washington, DC and Beth Weinman in the FDA’s Office of General Counsel.  The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Boston Field Division; the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General; Department of Defense Office of Criminal Investigation; and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Inspector General.

Medical Alley Association, according to their website, is a state-based member organization serving the health technology community with focus on Medical Alley, the world’s most concentrated health technology cluster made up of medical device, biopharmaceutical, diagnostic and digital health industry leaders. Medical Alley “a region in Minnesota that was said to follow the corridor from Rochester through Duluth; but as the years have stretched, so have the borders,” and well, I guess those borders extend all the way to venture capital funded startup medical device fraud capital of the world, Silicon Valley.

 The same Skadden, Arps Slate, Meagher, & Flom white collar crime criminal defense attorneys along with, DuVal & Associates  who helps companies deal with FDA so the company can focus on innovating* and Medical Alley Association who helps serve the health technology community (ahem) are coming together Thursday, April 7, 2016 to present: How to Get Away With Fraud At Taxpayer Expense Executive Liability For Alleged Marketing Misconduct With Today’s DOJ.  I did not know Dante’s Eighth Circle (Fraud) offered any room large enough for all those egos.

*Those unfamiliar with the startup industry the word “innovation” is often used as manipulation, to evade the law.  Startups notoriously and arrogantly think that the regular laws and rules do not apply.

Phew! I’m thrilled, Michael Loucks, who The New York Times referred to as “arguably the nation’s most influential prosecutor of healthcare fraud,” when he was former acting U.S. Attorney and first U.S. Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, landed on his feet alright at the gates of Hell Skadden, Arps Slate, Meagher, & Flom.  

For years, Mr. Loucks has argued that whistle-blowers are paid far much in health care fraud cases — bounties up to 30 percent, totaling $650 million in just the last two years, he said. These people would blow the whistle for less, he argued both inside the prosecutor’s office and more recently in a paper titled “the Great American Giveaway.” While that hostility toward what he considers the greed of some whistle-blowers is old news, Mr. Loucks’ views on unsealing their complaints are new.

It’s actually 15-25% of Medicare charges deducted from the total civil damages (the percentage is not taken from the total civil damages it’s a percentage of a percentage which is a manipulation of facts while blaming the whistleblower; and, this money is taxed in highest bracket something the media tends to gloss over buying into DOJ spin. An anonymous DOJ source, “no one, almost no one gets the full 25%.” This is an attempt from two known corrupt entities to vilify the whistleblower so that people don’t look at the actual crimes or ask DOJ where does all that money go they collect from whistleblowers? “We don’t know, none of us know [where or how the money collected from whistleblowers is spent within the US Government],” an anonymous source within DOJ.

Hmm, per The Sociopathic Business Model™ Selective Tolerance A,  that’s inconsistent & contradictory language to action  for someone in the AG’s office to want to bite the hand that fed him, literally.  Without healthcare whistleblowers we could do away with entire divisions within the AG’s offices, DOD, FBI, FDA, CMS, HHS-OIG, saving taxpayers but also killing thousands of more taxpayers.

Clearly, Loucks didn’t understand the difference between pharmaceutical and medical device fraud, or that the Stratus Microflow Spacer case taught the DOJ:

•  Venture capital funded startup medical device fraud is why all startups post-IPO or sale are now underperforming, which helped to prove the tech bubble popped in 2008, and linked to SEC crimes.
• Learned how NEA has a pathological history of funding startup medical device fraud creating a war on women, who are injured and forced to fight Congress to try and Bayer’s Essure off the market or why 26,000 women are awaiting trials in federal court, fighting with Johnson & Johnson all because of venture capital funding fraud. 
• DOJ wouldn’t have known how startups are making “small subtle changes” to the 510(k), knowing the FDA wouldn’t catch it on and…
• DOJ, because of what they learned from the Stratus Microflow Spacer, venture capital funded startup fraud and the fraudulently obtained 510(k) wouldn’t have been able to prevent a startup crime where, for one of the first times in U.S. history,  CMS prevented venture capital funded startup fraud when they exposed Theranos, running 250 tests when they were only FDA cleared for one.

Sure, whistleblowers should work for free just like Louck, who donates his entire salary…oh wait, that’s again inconsistent & contradictory…starting to notice a pattern in the Dante’s Eighth Circle other than fraud, hypocrisy & double standards from Root to Louck.   And really, shouldn’t we  the people, still be paying Louck for his crowning  $2.3 billion settlement against Pfizer achievement  capped at the end of a four-year secret investigation?

Oddly, DOJ press release for this landmark, historic case, omits the Pfizer CEO*’s name, the CEO who was set to get off on the original criminal charges; but, evidence supported he went back changed the date on an email. He should have charged with obstruction according to an anonymous source with the DOJ who also relayed frustration over the fact that Louck decided not to charge CEO criminally yet once he was passed over for an appointment in the AG’s office Louck left and then placed blame back on the DOJ saying they should have criminally prosecuted him (Pfizer CEO), when he was responsible for making the decision in the first place. Wow, talk about manipulation of facts while not recognizing the rights of others without shame, remorse, guilt or accountability.

*Pfizer CEO name is still difficult to attribute to this crime and why the Yates Memo is so important for the people and a weapon for the defense.

It’s a good think Louck is handling the Yates Memo discussion during the Dante playdate with the Devil because  he can offer this lesser-known side of the Pfizer story for all his defense buddies. Frequent readers of this site know that the Pfizer case was handled by Covington LLP, you, know the place where for US Attorney General Eric Holder went back to work?

And the Eighth Circle of Hell wouldn’t be complete without the hubris-filled musing of a Keynote Speaker: None other than Satan’s Minion: Howard Root: I Did it My Way, sure buddy as long as your way also included a civil settlement of $520,000 and an acquittal of charges.  The Sociopathic Business Model™ maintains that unethical and or illegal behavior is encouraged, replicated and rewarded; and, I’d say speaking to peers within the legal field about medical device fraud is rewarding bad behavior.

Acquitted on all criminal charges: #OJSimpson #CaseyAnthony & VSI CEO Howard Root https://t.co/UZhxENFtB4 pic.twitter.com/yJeHjnwv9O

— Melayna Lokosky (@MelaynaLokosky) March 4, 2016

Ahh, yes, they’re all a match made in hell; and, why we as employees, consumers, patients, shareholder and taxpayers really need to look at the facts and not the spin that’s negotiated behind closed doors, which make no mistake, is never innocence if damages, fines or settlements, are negotiated,  regardless of what unethical people representing unethical companies would like us to think.  Thank you, to the person who sent the tip along about Medical Alley, as you anticipated, this was story was right up my alley.

Updated: May 27, 2016

St. Martin’s Balks At “The New Julia,” Demands Return Of BOOK Advance

#ForcedAccountability Looks like someone in the publishing industry is ethical after all.   St. Martin’s Press demanded the return of Julia Allison Baugher’s book advance for Experiments in Happiness, when the manuscript(s) failed to mirror the book proposal,which landed her the original deal. Manipulating facts, not recognizing the right’s of others without shame, remorse, guilt or accountability while placing blame just didn’t fly at St. Martin’s Press, who’ve officially made it off The Sociopathic Business Model™ list and over to The MMpiHer Method™, as an ethical, trusted company to support.

I believe that’s  the first reversal from unethical to ethical on the site.  Congratulations St. Martin’s Press!

Updated: February 19, 2016

Julia Allison’s Free Happiness Coaching Session via Facebook

Julia Allison journalist, author, sex expert, reality tv star, media expert, dancer, happiness coach. If pathologically, manipulating facts without shame, remorse, guilt or accountability while placing blame on others for their own unethical and illegal behavior, is the road to happiness –I’ll pass.  When someone in their 30’s hasn’t held a position in the same field, earning a steady paycheck (W-2 or 1099), for at least five years it’s a RED FLAG, especially if coaching is involved. This new market of unregulated, underqualified, self-proclaimed experts teaching or coaching others is ripe with fraud.    The real road to happiness starts with making informed decisions based on facts in order to prevent consumer victimization.  I already know that I would not work with or as a consultant would not recommend  that of any clients work Julia Allison because of a pathological history of unethical behavior.

Do your homework before giving anyone your hard earned free time or money! 

• Ask to speak live to references (Google search the references to verify they aren’t just friends giving good reviews)
  • Ask what specific contributions they’ve made in advisory roles (sometimes companies will want the image vs the substance of having people in these roles).  Meaning they’re in a role or on a website but offered no real value.
• Ask for hard copy samples of work, specific to your needs when hiring a consultant
• Ask for documentation that verifies previous income claims
• Always sign an NDA (Non-disclosure Agreement) with any coach or consultant.  This prevents them selling, exploiting or profiting from your problems.

juliaallison.com/coaching is dead-linked, meaning she’s not currently charging, and Media Expert Julia Allison’s website has not been updated since roughly 2013. As stated above she is offering free 60-90 minute happiness coaching to the first ten people.

UPDATED: September 11, 2015 Julia Allison at Brit + Co event inconsistently makes no mention of her previous investment in the company

UPDATED June 15, 2015 Julia Allison states she’s an investor in Brit + Co (below the main story)

UPDATED May 28, 2015

May 27, 2015

www.juliaallison.com

Julia Allison and her “brand” represent everything I personally avoid and professionally caution clients to avoid when seeking help if they’re serious about marketing.  Allison’s brand pathologically manipulates the rights of others without shame, remorse, guilt or accountability while her brand places blame on her clients which pretty much makes her the worst business partner & the poster child for The Sociopathic Business Model™. 

Marketing vs Branding

Her lack of ethical behavior has been called into question on this site as well as countless other places on the web, the least of which what she incorrectly refers to as her “hate” site Reblogging Donk but is really just a site that forces accountability for her inconsistent & contradictory language to action.

UPDATED: 

Not one to believe in coincidence I noticed late this afternoon that the site (which I do not own and do not know who does) Reblogging Donk is down. Previously the subject of that site Julia Allison (Baugher) and her attorney father Peter Baugher, tried and successfully for a time shut that site down.  Mr. Baugher’s defense was essentially it’s unfair anonymous people use the internet. If the subject of that site was responsible for today’s shut-down then the previous argument of anonymous speech is inconsistent & contradictory language to action because I do not write this site anonymously. The site in question was also previously down when the host(s) forgot to pay the renewal fee (it happens to everyone).  I’ve reached out to the site and will update again if new information becomes available.

Where does Julia Allison live again?

YOU KNOW YOU LIVE IN SF WHEN … you go through incense like a nicotine addict goes through packs of cigarettes. Just. one. more. SNIFF.

— Julia Allison (@JuliaAllison) April 5, 2015

Julia Allison last previous Facebook  post as on May 22, 2015 stating she was off the internet and attending Camp Grounded a digital detox camp for adults.   Pretty sure the rest of us call that willpower & restraint or actually being an adult..

Almost manically ( just like someone from San Francisco checking this site for updates during the same time) making up for lost time after digital detox Allison’s first Facebook post. (Note the lack of location) Allison’s second Facebook post stating she’s leaving for Princeton, NJ to spend time with her father, the same father that previously shut down Reblogging Donk. (again note the lack of location) Does someone need to go to digital detox again? Allison’s third post of May 28, 2015 (no location) Allison’s fourth Facebook post of the day isn’t really a great endorsement for Camp Grounded, is it? (no location) Whoops!   Julia Allison’s fifth  Facebook post indicates she’s still in San Francisco at roughly 2 PM on May 28, 2015. And despite the lack of location on this post (the sixth post and so far final post) it would indicate Julia Allison was still in San Francisco at 4 PM on May 28, 2015 unless she traveled with these hand written in crayon-written notes to show her father and his Princeton buddies from her time at adult camp.   5/29/2015   End up update.

Haters vs Forced Accountability

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This is why it’s so important for any ethical company thinking of hiring brand ambassadors  (don’t) or thinking of working with another company should do their due diligence when it comes to ethics and accountability. Hiding behind such glib statements as “without thinking through,” should serve as red flag for any consumer looking to brand ambassadors (who are company paid tools of manipulation) when helping making decisions that could possibly harm you or your family.

And don’t be fooled by the number of followers a person has on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter as more often than not those numbers are purchased.  This is again an unethical tactic (it doesn’t matter that others are doing it-it doesn’t make it any more right or ethical).  I refuse to work with or endorse anyone using tactics meant to deceive either a company or consumers which is exactly what buying fakes “like” or “fans” epitomizes.  It is much harder to grow a business ethically with sustainable growth and many unethical will purchase what looks like hypergrowth as a means of attracking the ability to shill brands for personal gain-That’s a another red flag.

Julia Allison’s previous and or current support of  Sony, Radio Shack, Cheesy Skillets, Sea World, Coobie, and Yandy lack any continuity, and continuity is something a client should look for when hiring an ambassador (again if a company is hell-bent sent on it-I truly discourage this as the focus is on image (branding) and not the product (marketing).

@JuliaAllison Kinda lost any credibility with the whole “eat healthy” schtick when you advertised processed “Cheesy Skillets” here..

— Tim ☮ (@timpatterson) March 10, 2013

Also ambassadorships are should be limited in number and never hire anyone with multiple ambassadorships (it weakens your product) and never hire an ambassador who is not willing to clearly state the compensation terms as the lack transparency lends to unethical and or possible illegal behavior and not what any company should want to hitch their wagon to-so to speak.  Killing My Career

Julia Allison admits to taking money from Cheesy Skillets but unethically never eating them and then victimizes her own client on Twitter glibly responding when forced to be accountable. 

Julia Allison placing blame, insulting & demeaning people while she refuses to take accountability.

Tim Patterson Twitter

Sterling Lord Literistics, Inc Julia Allison’s Experiments in Happiness (pg 38)

Anonymous sites that force accountability like Reblogging Donk are necessary as a means of exposing the negative truth, in this case, Julia Allison would rather remain hidden.

Every day we see people given second chances as opposed to earning second chances from the likes of the NFL, boxer Floyd Mayweather, to this case where Allison’s brand’s pathological unethical behavior was encouraged, replicated and rewarded with a book deal from St. Martin’s Press. Just because someone is forced to be accountable it’s not the same as someone taking true accountability and should never be confused with actual growth or understanding of past wrong doings.

wondering why so many people–celebs, especially–come in to pitch a “memwah”

— Elizabeth Beier (@EBeier) April 7, 2009

Have to wonder what

Editor Elizabeth Beier thinks about having to

edit a “memwah” from a pathologically unethical

non-celebrity just a few years later?

It also appears Jezebel’s Kara Brown is also over the memoir: Delete Your Memoir 

And from the comments section:

“Some people get so bent out of shape over nothing.” Julia Allison

That was Allison’s response when she didn’t recognize the rights of a very upset Uber customer, tech VC and author Pete Sims, when Allison’s brand was invited to an exclusive Uber party and unethically and quite possibly illegally breached data and cyberstalked Uber’s high-profile client. This is the type of unrepentant unethical behavior Publisher St. Martin’s Press (pg. 38), Agent Robert Guinsler & Editor Elizabeth Beier are rewarding.

Allison’s bio is consistent with her pathological manipulation of the facts as she was

one of three women co-stars of Bravo’s single-season of “Miss Advised.”

I’ve previously stated candidly that my problem is less with Allison herself as it relates to her pending book because she’s consistent when pushing her image without substance-that’s a given, that’s an expectation and that’s her brand.  The problem is with corporations like St. Martin’s Press who are encouraging & rewarding Allison’s unethical behavior; and worse unwilling to take accountability when the truth is exposed and much like Allison, St. Martin’s Press decided to block their haters.

It’s interesting Andy Cohen made a comment on his Watch What Happens Live! show about casting for his Bravo reality shows and said that there are people viewers love to hate  which makes for good tv and people viewers just hate which makes for bad tv and that second group doesn’t get asked back.  Telling as Ms. Allison wasn’t asked back on the show in which she “starred” for Bravo in 2012.  Her bio and website appear to be a little thin on new content especially with a pending book.

St. Martin’s Press will likely find that Allison’s book will also fall into that second category, people readers just hate, which doesn’t translate to actual sales.  It’s not problem for me to add St. Martin’s Press to my list of companies that reward unethical behavior which warrants a boycott; however, my guess is that editor Elizabeth Beier is already being punished for rewarding the unethical behavior of Julia Allison.

UPDATED 

Julia Allison is “proud to be an investor in Brit + Co.!!” despite evidence to the contrary.  According to CrunchBase Brit + Co received $27.3 million in 3 rounds from 19 investors and Julia Allison is not one of them.  Allison’s brand has a pathological history where manipulation of the facts while not recognizing the rights of others and threatening those who expose the negative truth her company would rather remain hidden gives her warranted critics good reason to question her public Facebook statement.     1o Seed investors:

Seven Series A Investors

Five Series B investors

Ms. Allison statement may have been made as a glib attempt to bolster her image; but, startups, investors and the SEC do not look at such statements so casually.  It is possible that Allison’s brand is an investor in one of the investment firms (Intel Capital, Liberty Media, Oak Capital, DMGT, Cowboy Ventures, Index Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Founders Fund, General Catalyst Partners), but that information should be clearly and distinctly disclosed in a public post for several reasons:

1. The SEC needs an accurate record of all investors.

• Is she using her media status (and 139,000+ followers) to entice other potential investors?  Is she being compensated for the post?

• Allison’s vague public Facebook statement could be seen as a manipulation of the facts while not recognizing the rights of named investors or startup founder Brit Morin.  Does Morin’s brand want to be associated with Allison’s brand?

Is this an unethical investment fabrication or overreach on the part of image conscious Julia Allison or is this something far more nefarious that we’ve come to expect from startups? (as we’ve seen before on this site) At any rate the obvious manipulation of facts further validates that this is again enough information for me to know that Allison’s brand is not something I’d personally want to associate with nor would I recommend her brand to any clients as a consultant.

UPDATED: September 11, 2015

Julia Allison Baugher, no mention of investing in Britt & CO at the summitt at Fort Mason September 11, 2015

June 2015 mention of being an investor and September 2015 no mention of being an investor.

And for more recent inconsistent & contradictory behavior from Julia Allison Baugher:

Julia Allison Baugher from Burining Man to Britt Morin inconsistent & contradictory language to action.

From clown hooker costume ball to housewife in less than a week? Impressive or the need to be medicated?

All this inconsistent & contradictory behavior from the fifty faces of Julia Allison Baugher are enough for me to know this is not someone I would ever do business with or recommend a client do business with; however, I quite certain most of my clients aren’t looking for whatever it is she’s selling. Updated: September 13, 2015

IF a #brand is #InconsistentAndContradictory it’s a #RedFlag: Julia Allison wore that outfit, sober? @StMartinsPress pic.twitter.com/usYSVk59nH

— Melayna Lokosky (@MelaynaLokosky) September 14, 2015

Julia Price read Laura Donovan’s Piece November 4, 2015, and her #ProfessionalVictim story “went viral” November 18, 2015, #TheSociopathicBusinessModel

UPDATED: May 30, 2016 Congratulations Julia Price, your abusive false attention-seeking social media post encouraged others to replicate hoping for similar reward: media attention like Daily Mail and Mashable.

WhoCares posted a video of “Henry”  a six-year-old boy having a global meltdown over the state of the world while his tone-deaf mother filmed to exploit her young child while simultaneously ignoring the cries of another child.

It’s amazing that so many people (some of whom are sadly parents) think that getting something, anything, to go viral is will solve their problems and manipulate/fabricate scenarios shamelessly; and, in this case while exploiting one child and neglecting another. This is akin to Julia Price‘s fake little boy defending her from a mean man story. And when mainstream media grabs a hold of these abusive stories it perpetuates the cycle where others view it as encouragement to try and replicate with the goal of getting rewarded. I’d put money that these are they type of parents that held a branding focus group to help select their children’s names, not because they liked them, but thinking ahead to “branding opportunities.”‪#‎ImageVsSubstance‬ ‪#‎TheSociopathicBusinessModel‬

UPDATED: Julia Price the jogger who was catcalled and protected by little boy “James” called out for fake story.

November 21, 2015

UPDATED: This story also got picked by the Daily Mail and Mashable

#ProfessionalVictim Julia Price

This Lady’s Cat-Caller Got Shut Down By A Heroic Little Boy

 A little boy named James came to the rescue of Julia Price, a woman who was out for an everyday path run in Santa Monica, California and was accosted by a cat-caller who used verbiage against her that far was less than gentlemanly. And little James, whom she estimates is around seven or eight years old, showed that his badge of honor is bigger than his whole body and then some.

Earlier this year #ProfessionalVictim Julia Price was bothered by a homeless man, but she’d like us to have a “some sort of dialogue” about her. And while mental illness is swept under the rug so is exposing people for their abusive behavior. What kind of lacking in self-awareness asshole does stretches in an alleyway near homeless people?

We may think there’s really no harm in someone making up stories like this, especially if it gets us talking about the issues, but we’re not talking about the issues, we’re talking about Julia Price who shamelessly without remorse, guilt or accountability was going to keep throwing social issues out on the internet until one finally got her the attention she thinks she deserves.

At one point she made a comment that she thought it was best she didn’t get a picture of him (James) and that way everyone can imagine him as they want. THAT was the “I made this shit up” nail in the coffin for me.

FLAG ON THE PLAY: You shouldn’t take pictures of other people’s children and post them on the internet is the correct answer. 

Julia Price was called out by myself as well as others on Facebook & social media but like all #ProfessionalVictims she removed anything that didn’t fit the fabricated narrative gaining her internet attention. She later posted a thank you to her fans video where she states her passion is to fight cat-calling and “who knows if she’ll ever see that little kid again,” well, that’s doubtful I’m sure she’ll later remember they were visiting from outside the country or she’s frantically looking at hiring an attention-hungry stage mother/child combo so she can take this cat-calling dialogue on the road.

And from the comments section in from the Daily Mail:

Readers question Julia Price’s “little boy” story.

Julia Price getting called out for cat calling story by Daily Mail readers.

The dialogue: abusive people come in all shapes, colors, sizes and they walk among us finally may get Julia Price the attention she so seeks.

UPDATED: NxThera CCO, Patrick (Pat) Fabian CONVICTED of Crimes Related to Medical Devices

Case Study

Is Frank Yu, CEO & Founder of Ally Bridge Group, funding a fraud?

Frank Yu’s Ally Bridge Group on the board of healthcare startup Gentle Wave and also funding medical device startup NxThera.

Frank Yu, CEO & Founder of venture capital firm Ally Bridge Group (ABG), know for funding healthcare, is, in part funding medical device startup NxThera who employs federally indicted CONVICTED Patrick Pat Fabian as the company’s Chief Commercial Officer (CCO).

NxThera Leadership deadlink to federally indicted CCO Pat Fabian

Venture Capital backed NxThera removed federally indicted CCO Patrick (Pat) Fabian from the website but NOT the company. This should have the feds & taxpayers asking what else is NxThera hiding or their funders Ally Bridge & Boston Scientific?

UPDATED: EarLens CEO William (Bill) Facteau CONVICTED of Crimes Related to Medical Devices

March 18, 2016

FDA is not as difficult and obscure as it was five years ago – Bill Facteau, CEO, Earlens, @#medtech2014 conference

— Arundhati Parmar (@aparmarbb) May 21, 2014

Whoops! Less than a year later Bill Facteau, CEO, of startup EarLens, (funded in part by NEA & JJDC*), was arrested and federally indicted on 18 counts of fraud for another NEA & JJDC* fund startup Acclarent, where he was also CEO, makes you wonder if he regrets saying “FDA is not as difficult,” now.

“Avoid getting indicted,” William (Bill) Facteau.  Here’s a better thought, avoid engaging in unethical & illegal behavior that’s the foundation for the fact-based indictment.

Bill Facteau counts NEA & ExploraMed among his Board & Investors: #BoardWhores lead to #GodsOfFrauds

“My board, investors, and friends have been amazingly supportive. So that is what keeps you going,” Federally indicted CEO of EarLens William (Bill) Facteau

One of these things is not like the others…if this is how investors (or NEA who has a pathological history of funding startup medical device fraud) shows “support,” someone should get Facteau a dictionary.

Of course, they’re supportive, one wonders if that support (clearly not publically) goes beyond moral and perhaps also includes financial. If Facteau is willing to possibly go to jail for fraud, he, co-founders (patent holders for the device in question, NEA General Partner, ExploraMed Founder Josh Makower & John Chang, boards and venture capital investors, like NEA, that either engineered or were aware when Acclarent, likely for the first time in U.S. history, knowingly & willingly defrauding the FDA when fraudulently obtaining the necessary 510(k), they’d be silly not to support him, now that they’ve been caught.

Is Facteau becoming collateral damage as part of the cycle of fraud he’s helped create and perpetuate? The Sociopathic Business Model™ maintains that all accomplices eventually become victims, something I know all too well from personal experience as a rep for then startup Acclarent from June 2007 through the sale to Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon in January 2010 until wrongful termination in January 2011.   Many abusive people have and will continue to suggest, incorrectly, that this site’s coverage of this case & they key players is vindictive.  Vindictive behavior is what abusive people engage when there is no justification for their actions.  My actions are justified and verified with fact-based evidence.  I’ve often said there’s a name for people who have a problem with people who expose fraud, they’re called criminals.

The First Amendment protects truthful speech, but as the Supreme Court pointed out in Illinois v. Telemarketing Associates, it “does not shield fraud.” Facteau mentions  VSI CEO Howard Root in the Healthegy video. Root was  recently acquitted of criminal charges (not the same as innocent) AND his company paid a civil DOJ fine. Let’s keep in mind that both OJ Simpson (regarding the his ex-wife’s murder) and Casey Anthony were also acquitted of criminal charges.

Recent desperate attempts from the pharma and medical device industry to misappropriate the First Amendment in order to avoid accountability for off-label promotion places blame on FDA, employees, surgeons, and patients and allows for executives, boards and venture capital investors to encourage, replicate and reward unethical & illegal behavior at great expense to us all.

Judge Lamberth from Root’s case,  stated it’s “not a crime for a device company or its representatives to give doctors wholly truthful and non-misleading information about the unapproved use of a device.”

Let’s use a simple example to illustrate the dangers of out-of-touch federal judges allowing the industry to misappropriate the First Amendment to shield fraud.

(Not meant to demean or insult any reader, but there are readers from all industries, not just medical devices)

If a drinking straw was a medical device and the FDA 510 (k) cleared it for orally drinking water, reps selling the straw, under the First Amendment off-label guidelines, could also sell their straw (device) to orally drink soda in addition to water.

The industry, if given an in inch will take a yard, would also point out the straw cleared orally for drinking water, used off-label orally for drinking soda could also be used off-label intranasally for snorting cocaine, all are factual statements and by the recent federal ruling approved as off-label selling protected under the First Amendment.  

It’s inconsistent & contradictory for the federal courts allow unethical companies & executives to misappropriate the First Amendment, which wholly negates the only purpose of FDA.  What the courts are failing to recognize is that companies are already essentially selling straws for cocaine, and taking the extra yard by selling straws that just don’t work, at all.     

In the industry, where I made my career for 13 years, if FDA gives companies an inch they’ll take a yard; and, Acclarent is the precedent-setting the case the courts need to fully understand the dangers of the misappropriation of the First Amendment. The device in question is the Relieva Stratus Microflow Spacer, a nasal implant that looks like a cross between a balloon and straw, with hundreds of little micro-drilled holes cleared for saline. If you’re not familiar saline is clear like water, what you’ll notice, is that in the image below the substance is white.

What Happens if the FDA Revokes a 510K Should All Predicate Devices Follow? Relieva Stratus Microflow Spacer

Acclarent: was not wholly truthful, concealing the intended use,  from FDA when obtaining their 510 (k) for the Relieva Stratus Microflow Spacer: FDA 510(k) cleared for Saline (which immediately fell out of the device rendering it useless)

FDA 510(k) cleared Stratus for Saline (which immediately fell out of the device rendering it useless)

Patent design for Stratus was for drugs and other substances that must be injected into living tissue (not a device) in order to be viable.

Reps were instructed to sell the device with suspension steroid Kenalog 40 (white substance in image above) that must be injected into living tissue (not a device) in order to be viable.

Stratus did not work with Saline or Kenalog 40. We sold a drinking straw cleared

Using the original example above, essentially,  Acclarent sold a straw cleared for water, but the straw never worked with water it never worked for snorting cocaine; and, when they got caught selling and billing a 100% useless product, tried to hide their illegal activity fraudulently behind the First Amendment.

That’s more than taking a yard, that’s taking the lengths of two football fields end to end.

Judging from the Healthegy Inc, PR puff-piece from the beginning of this article, regret, accountability, facts, and anything resembling reality are missing from Facteau’s current portfolio. And speaking of Judge, Judge Allison D. Burroughs assigned to oversee the Facteau & fellow indicted former Johnson & Johnson Ethicon’s Acclarent executive Patrick (Pat) Fabian’s criminal trial set for May 23, 2016,  Burroughs previously wrote for Food and Drug Law Journal: Off-Label Promotion: Government Theories of Prosecution And Facts the Drive Them. Let’s hope she understands the law better than Judge Lamberth, off-label, and sees the end-to-end football fields of a difference when a company, their founders, executives and venture capital investors  knowingly and willingly lied to the FDA and when caught fraudulently, hid behind the First Amendment.  

February 9, 2016

What do the 2016 Oscar’s swag bag, a sex toy, and medical device fraud all have in common?  Menlo Park, California’s serial fraudtrepreneur entrepreneur Josh Makower.

What does founder of frauds, Josh Makower, do once the Department of Justice investigates his most successfully sold medical device company, NEA funded, ExploraMed incubated, startup Acclarent that sold Johnson & Johnson for $785 million, where two former executives were arrested, indicted on 18 counts of fraud and currently awaiting trial? And he holds the patent to the fraudulently obtain medical device in question?  Naturally, funnel all that sexism made famous by startups  into “Nuelle ™, a sexual wellness and intimate care company focused on women’s sexual health,” charging $250 for a sex toy,  Fiera^® Arouser for Her™.  Well, at least, Makower is finding a more transparent way to screw people, but still without lube.

Too bad Johnson & Johnson had to sell off their KY Jelly division due to 510 (k) issues, or they could have cross-promoted. Funny thing, around the same time Makower’s Acclarent was subpoenaed by the DOJ for 510 (k) issues in 2012 regarding the Relieva Stratus Microflow Spacer, Johnson & Johnson received a similar subpoena in 2012, for KY Jelly, where Johnson & Johnson decided it was too hard to fill out paperwork for a billion business and sold it. That’s certainly inconsistent & contradictory for an established company like Johnson & Johnson to decide to sell a successful division unless of course, the FDA looking into issues with Makower’s 510 (k) for Acclarent which was sold to Johnson & Johnson in 2010, also triggered an investigation into the company’s other 510 (k), forcing the sale.

The Sociopathic Business Model™ maintains that when a company “decides” to inconsistently & contradictorily pull a medical device from the market, it’s because the FDA is behind closed doors threatening  strongly suggesting the company remove the device. In 2015, the DOJ found that likely for the first time in U.S. history, Makower’s  Acclarent knowingly and willingly set out to fraudulently obtained a 510 (k).  So essentially, Makower screwed taxpayers without lube, when he decided to defraud the U.S. Government, he made a reported $130 million and we’re all picking up the bill for ongoing criminal investigation.  Thanks, Josh! Nice of the fellas to take the fall for you instead of with you.

The former Acclarent Executives William (Bill) Facteau & Patrick (Pat) Fabian were arrested, indicted on 18 counts of fraud and awaiting trial; but, Josh Makower Co-Founder of Acclarent, on the patent for the Relieva Stratus Microflow Spacer that fraudulently obtained a 510 (k) is able to take his fraudulently obtained profits and become a founder of a new company, Nuelle.  That certainly looks a lot like encouraging, replicating and rewarding unethical and illegal behavior.   FBI website

Wow, 103 reviews for Fiera, the $250, not covered by insurance, sex toy.  One would have to wonder if these are organic reviews from paying customers or if the product was given in exchange for reviews, or if the reviewers ever even touched the products at all?  It wouldn’t be the first time Team Makower, manipulated got a little creative, whether it was for Acclarent’s fraudulently obtained 510 (k), or the astroturfing Twitter account created to troll then Acclarent adversary, AAO President Dr. David Kennedy.

Acclarent’s astroturfing account to troll the AAO & Dr. Kennedy in 2009 that opposed the company’s tactics and products.

So, just who is Team Makower for Nuelle’s™ Fiera^® Arouser for Her™. ?  It’s tough to tell from their current website because  now under About Us: Who We Are, is a PR Spun, scrubbed of any ties to fraud, word salad of nothingness.  Good thing there’s screenshots before they scrubbed the site, right?

Josh Makower Founder & Executive Chairman of Nuelle was also Co-Founder of under federal investigation Acclarent, where Karen Long, now Nuelle VP of Marketing & Sales was Acclarent’s VP of Marketing, Eric Goldfarb Nuelle’s VP of R&D & Co-Founder was Acclarent’s Director of R&D and Earl (Eb) Bright Nuelle’s COO, sat on Acclarent’s Board. For a more detailed account:  BOARD WHORES

Want to know a great way to end an argument with your partner? Have sex! #BringBackDesire #FeelTheLove pic.twitter.com/bfTFlmzsBg

— fieraforher (@fieraforher) August 21, 2015

Well, this awful marketing, with sexist overtones, can now be easily explained by Karen Long’s position as Nuelle’s VP of Sales and Marketing, formerly Karen Long VP of Marketing at Acclarent.  For the record, Karen, scrubbing truthful, negative SEO from the internet is unethical, not marketing. Fixed that for you, though! It’s sad when people you respected and worked with, like Karen Long and Eric Goldfarb, are now knowingly and willingly lining up for the opportunity to possibly wear federal handcuffs for Makower, again.

@AliceRadio thanks for the mention of @fieraforher this morning for #Oscars goodie Bag. We are a bay area start up-come visit us! @DrLeahM

— Karen M. Long (@Klonglcsw) February 8, 2016

Isn’t it nice to know that Makower’s new company Nuelle, after he profited from Acclarent’s fraud at taxpayer expense, is free to help out those poor, unfortunate celebrities at the Oscars this year? $220,000 Oscar swag bag includes sex toys, breast enhancements, Chapstick.  You’d think that Distinctive Assets, who puts together the Oscar swag bags would do a little research into who founded the sex toy company, Nuelle.

As with any company or product, know who you’re getting in bed with and why.  For me personally, as someone who worked for Makower’s fraudulent Acclarent, I would never support any company where he’s involved, including as a founder or investor; and, as a consultant, I would never recommend that any of my clients invest in New Enterprise Associates (NEA), where Josh Makower is a venture partner, ExploraMed where Josh Makower is a founder of the incubator and or Nuelle™ where Josh Makower, despite, unethically being scrubbed from the company’s site is the founder.  If we want to create change as far as fraud in concerned in relation to business, as I’ve previously stated, we need to remove those willing to overlook fraud or worse line up to knowingly and willingly work with those linked to fraud, including former Acclarent, current Nuelle executives, Karen Long and Eric Goldfarb.

It’s up to each person reading this to make the best decisions personally, professionally and for their families based on the facts; but, if we keep encouraging, replicating and rewarding unethical and illegal behavior, then we’re part of the problem and not part of the solution.

Disclaimer: I worked in the startup medical device, where as a woman, I was a minority, and over 90% of my superiors were white males, an industry often noted for its lack of diversity.  There are two categories in which all people fall, either: Abusive or Non-Abusive and the people I write about under The Sociopathic Business Model™ are Abusive on behalf of a company where gender, religion, race, are just subcategories that are adjectives that describe one of the two main categories: Abusive or Non-Abusive.   Abusive people will state that I’m a man-hater, that is not true, I do not dislike men or white men (I am a heterosexual, caucasian woman) but, I dislike and expose abusive people as it relates to the business world.

In relation to startups, there’s a disproportionate number of Abusive (Category):  CEOs or Venture Capital Firms (adjectives), who also happen white males (adjectives),  which I write about on this site.  I did not create the diversity problem and through Killing My Career & The Sociopathic Business Model™ both of which I’ve created, I’m trying to expose the problem, force accountability and create positive change.

June 26, 2015

Note to readers:

The information provided below will likely generate more questions than I’m transparently able to answer at this time. Please know it is not my intention to deceive or manipulate, as that is inconsistent & contradictory to the goal of this site which is exposing the truth; and, I will provide more facts as I’m able-Thank you for your understanding-Melayna Lokosky

J&J Hit with New Multimillion-Dollar Fraud Suit

Acclarent, a startup acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2010, knowingly marketed its Relieva Stratus MicroFlow spacer for an unproven drug delivery use, according to a former employee’s whistleblower complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The new lawsuit, State of California exrel. Melayna Lokosky vs. Acclarent, Inc.;Ethicon, Inc.; and Johnson & Johnson, maintains that J&J, which acquiredAcclarent for $785 million in 2010, is culpable for millions of dollars in damages, as insurance companies were led to pay for Acclarent devices that were misbranded, medically unnecessary, and marketed to physicians for unproven off-label uses.

The rest of the story can be found on Qmed  by Chris Newmarker & Brian Buntz

Information on the federally unsealed (which implies something else is still sealed federally) arrests & federal indictments of fomer Johnson & Johnson Ethicon Acclarent executives William (Bill) Facteau & Patrick (Pat) Fabian can be found here

Supreme Court saves Obamacare (or Affordable Care Act ACA) and regardless if you are for or against the decision one problem that’s not addressed with the ACA is the high cost of private health insurance.  This is not a criticism of the Act it just means the healthcare discussion doesn’t end with the ACA it’s just the beginning of the discussion.

Despite federal evidence of fraud and billion dollar fines to pharma & medical device companies private health insurance companies write off that loss opposed to legally trying to recover it which would lower the cost of private health insurance.  Instead it allows fraudulent pharma/medical device companies and private health insurance to essentially make a deal behind closed doors at the expense of taxpayers and employees who purchase private health insurance.

h) Health insurance fraud is a particular problem for health
insurance policyholders. Although there are no precise figures, it is
believed that fraudulent activities account for billions of dollars
annually in added health care costs nationally. Health care fraud
causes losses in premium dollars and increases health care costs
unnecessarily

What the DOJ does federally to force accountability from fraudulent pharma & medical device companies the California Insurance Frauds Prevention Act (California Insurance Code 1871.7) can do to force accountability from private health insurance in the State of California to force accountability back on to the pharma & med device companies who were overpaid for fraudulent devices or implants.  Each state should lobby to have this same statute added as a means to address the high costs of private health insurance that’s not currently addressed within the ACA.

For more information on what the ACA & DOJ Forgot When it Comes to Healthcare Fraud California Insurance Frauds Prevention Act (California Insurance Code 1871.7) Didn’t

Represented by Delaney Kester, LLP (Boston & Los Angeles) and Kellogg, Huber Hansen, Todd Evans, and Figel, PLLC (Washington DC).

The full complaint can be found here:

1871.7 Complaint (LASC — BC530372) (Filed Under Seal on 12-13-13)

April 12, 2015

Former Johnson & Johnson Ethicon Acclarent, Inc. Executives, William M. (Bill) Factaeu & Patrick (Pat) Fabian Charged with Securities Fraud and Crimes Related to Sale and Distribution of Medical Devices

April 10, 2015

DOJ Press Release (Friday afternoon) known as a data dump hoping none of the major news outlets will pick it up. I bet there are more than a few people who hope a nuclear war erupts this weekend so this gets buried Monday morning. If you’re reading this-please don’t allow that to happen.  Please get it out to Pharmalot (oh wait they’re owned by the WSJ).

NOTE TO MEDIA:  Please attach all the company names to a potential crime (Johnson & Johnson Ethicon Acclarent) as this forces accountability from a company (SEO) and does not allow them to place blame without taking accountability.

Case Study from the DOJ Press Release:

BOSTON – The former (but still financially JNJ funded) Chief Executive Officer and Vice President of Sales of Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon’s Acclarent, Inc., a medical device company, were charged in an indictment unsealed today with conspiracy, securities fraud, wire fraud and violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.

William (Bill) Facteau, 45, of Atherton, California, and Patrick (Pat) Fabian, 48, of Lake Elmo, Minnesota, were indicted on one count of conspiracy, three counts of securities fraud, four counts of wire fraud and 10 counts of introducing adulterated or misbranded medical devices into interstate commerce.

The indictment alleges that Facteau and Fabian engaged in a scheme to fraudulently drive up Acclarent revenues and stock valuation by illegally marketing a medical device known as the Relieva Stratus Microflow Spacer (“Stratus”) for uses not cleared or approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”). Despite the fact that the company had told the FDA that the Stratus was a medical device intended to maintain an opening to a patient’s sinus, Facteau and Fabian launched the product intending it to be used as a steroid delivery device. #PRSPin Acclarent   The indictment alleges, however, that the FDA had specifically refused Acclarent’s request to clear the Stratus for marketing as a drug delivery device without further submissions to support that use.

#PRSpinUnSpun Acclarent  Co-Founders & Executives manipulated the facts and purposely & willfully withheld information from the rest of the company without shame, remorse, guilt or accountability for their personal benefit which are tactics right out of The Sociopathic Business Model™.

Facteau and Fabian are alleged to have sought to quickly develop and market products to create a projected revenue stream that would make Acclarent an attractive target for either an initial public offering (“IPO”) or acquisition. #PRSpin Johnson & Johnson The former health care executives allegedly concealed Acclarent’s illegal promotion and distribution of the Stratus as a steroid delivery device from potential purchasers of the company, including Ethicon, Inc., a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, (together, “Ethicon”).

#PRSPinUnSPun Johnson & Johnson Except someone at Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (JJDC) green lit $26 million in VC money to the then startup Acclarent in January of 2009.  Hey Johnson & Johnson that’s inconsistent & contradictory language to action and a tactic right out of The Sociopathic Business Model™. Try again!

I’d put the links to the actual stories, except someone has been busy on the internet trying to re-write history.  Who wouldn’t want the truth to come out? Hmmmm. Stumped? Keep reading…

 

In early 2010, Ethicon purchased Acclarent for approximately $785 million.  #PRSPin Johnson & Johnson Facteau and Fabian received approximately $30 million and $4 million, respectively, for stock options and other compensation in connection with the merger of Acclarent into Ethicon.

#PRSPinUnSpun Johnson & Johnson This might be tough to believe but someone other than William (Bill) Facteau made more than $30 million when Acclarent sold to Johnson & Johnson and that someone is Acclarent Co-Founder Josh Makower who by some well-sourced accounts made more than $125 million.  Now many of you unfamiliar with this story will think he was just a Co-Founder along with engineer John Chang-but no-all three of their names were on of the patents.  And better still Johnson & Johnson is still funding William (Bill) Facteau, Josh Makower and John Chang (hey that was missing from the DOJ press release!) So Johnson & Johnson and Ethicon are trying to distance themselves from the crimes at Acclarent while still funding the Co-Founders Josh Makower, John Chang & William (Bill) Facteau.  The DOJ press release (likely written with JNJ approval) was quick to distance William (Bill) Facteau as a former CEO but JNJ is still financially funding him.   Hey Johnson & Johnson again that’s inconsistent & contradictory language to action. Try harder!

Startup funding:NEA ExploraMed Acclarent Johnson& Johnson/JJDC Ethicon  (Acclarent was founded on fraud)

Gods of Frauds: Board Whores Edition (Acclarent was funded by Johnson & Johnson who is still funding Acclarent Co-founders Josh Makower & John Chang along with former CEO William (Bill) Facteau.)

Nevro Corp. $126M IPO with No FDA Approved Product: Case Study (Can possible fraud be prevented?)

Acclarent Co-founders Josh Makower, John Chang, and Former CEO William (Bill) Facteau, except it looks like Makower may be trying to rewrite history and now add Chang as a co-founder:

Crunchbase only lists Josh Makower as the Founder of Acclarent.

For those that have been playing along that’s:

Dorothy Down! (Current Worldwide President of Acclarent who decided to step down)

And the wings of a (STILL FUNDED by Johnson & Johnson) flying monkey just got clipped

The charging statutes provide for a maximum prison sentence of up to 20 years on each count of wire fraud and securities fraud, five years for the conspiracy count, and three years for each count for violations of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, followed by a term of supervised release and a $250,000 fine or twice the gross loss or gain, whichever is greater.  Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties.  Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sara Miron Bloom and Patrick Callahan of the District of Massachusetts with the assistance of Trial Attorney Ross Goldstein of the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch in Washington, DC and Beth Weinman in the FDA’s Office of General Counsel.  The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Boston Field Division; the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General; Department of Defense Office of Criminal Investigation; and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Inspector General.

USAO – District of Massachusetts

The details contained in the indictment are allegations.  The defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

#PRSPin: According to Ed Silverman of the WSJ Pharmalot:

A J&J spokeswoman sent us a note to say that the health care giant has “cooperated with the government in this investigation since receiving the subpoena in 2012, and will continue to do so.” And she adds that neither Acclarent nor Johnson & Johnson have been charged with or accused of any wrongdoing in the indictment.

#PRSpinUnSpun: So strange Johnson & Johnson spokeswomen like Sheri Woodruff no longer appear to be providing reporters with their names. Wonder why?  Hey funny the JNJ spokeswoman forgot to mention Ethicon in that little blub distancing from wrongdoing as the WSJ article from December 2009 clearly states:

It’s also inconsistent & contradictory for JNJ Spokeswoman to state that Acclarent hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing when in fact Acclarent’s top two executives were arrested & indicted which is the definition of wrongdoing.

 At the end of Mr. Silverman’s article I tried (unsuccessfully) to leave the following comment:

“A J&J spokeswoman sent us a note to say that the health care giant has “cooperated with the government in this investigation since receiving the subpoena in 2012, and will continue to do so.” And she adds that neither Acclarent nor Johnson & Johnson have been charged with or accused of any wrongdoing in the indictment.”

Noticeably absent from the JNJ spokeswoman’s list is Ethicon who according to a WSJ December 2009 article clearly states that Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon unit purchased Acclarent-perhaps an oversight or future indication?  http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703581204574600681959562054

Also not mentioned or perhaps not asked is if Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation which funded $26 million to Acclarent as a startup up through ExploraMed is in fact STILL funding former Acclarent CEO William (Bill) Facteau through ExploraMed via Neotract, Nevro, MoxiMed and perhaps even Earlens (they have 22 unnamed investors) where Mr. Facteau currently is CEO.

It’s also interesting that none of the reporters asked the Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman why they still kept selling Stratus as “catalog only” after the purchase from Acclarent in 2010 up until May 2013 when they decided to pull it from the U.S. Market. Would that decision have anything to do with the 2012 subpoena Ms. Johnson & Johnson spokesperson mentioned they were cooperating with in the Pharmalot article?

It’s often been written on this site that there are a lot of felons in corporate America they just aren’t convicted yet. The Massachusetts District of the United States Department of Justice is on the road to trying to change that and my guess is that no amount of clicking together ruby red slippers will prevent them from easing on down that yellow brick road.

Brad Perriello from Mass + Device refers to 18 counts of fraud from Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Miron Bloom as a slap-c’mon fella that’s a Bloom bitch slap that was felt all across the med device and startup industry-start doing your job!

Feds slap former Acclarent execs with fraud charges Mass+Device

Attempts to hack the site are forwarded to the authorities:

Updated: March 26, 2016

The Sociopathic Business Model™ often reminds employees, consumers, patients, long-term shareholders and taxpayers to take the billion dollar blinders off of venture capital, made only more difficult by media elevating #GodsOfFrauds to hero status.   The New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide or Forbes Midas List both of which highlight people from venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA), neglect to mention the much darker side of venture capital: fraud.

November 5, 2015

Part I: Venture Capital Firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is Paid to Kill Women

Frank Torti Jr. & Josh Makower are NEA partners and on the ExploraMed Incubated NEA & Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation funded startup Neotract Board together.

*NEA was the principle venture capital firm 44.5% stake along with Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation JJDC (Johnson & Johnson’s venture capital division)**, Delphi Ventures, and Meritech Capital Partners 

Part II: Venture Capital Firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) Funds Medical Device Fraud

Worldwide Chairman & CEO of Johnson & Johnson Alex Gorsky

Worldwide Chairman of Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Gary Pruden

Johnson & Johnson Worldwide, Venture Capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) Worldwide, and startup incubator ExploraMed, Mountain View, CA share a long history of creating & funding startup medical device fraud and is one of this country’s best kept secrets, by design. An exclusively obtained 41-page, first-person slide presentation from ExploraMed Founder and NEA Venture Partner, Josh Makower titled The Art Of Innovation, shows that unethical & illegal behavior is encouraged, replicated and rewarded and viewed positively while ethical behavior is removed and viewed negatively within the corporate culture and sales model.    A sales model requested  March 1, 2010 by Johnson & Johnson Worldwide Chairman & CEO Alex Gorsky and Worldwide Chairman of Medical Devices, Gary Pruden,  just two months after Makower’s incubated startup Acclarent funded by NEA & Johnson & Johnson* sold to Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon subsidiary for $785 million, this presentation became known internally at Johnson & Johnson as “Josh’s presentation,” and shared with more than 200 Johnson & Johnson executives and employees with the implied intent to replicate the success of the Acclarent sales model.

Med tech doesn’t have as many venture-backed billion dollar unicorns but Acclarent in 2010 was close.

The success of the Acclarent sales model came to life on April 8, 2015, and yielded the arrest & indictment of former Johnson & Johnson Ethicon Acclarent CEO William (Bill) Facteau & VP of Sales & Training Patrick (Pat) Fabian for 18 counts of  securities fraud and crimes related to the sales and distribution of medical devices, who are currently awaiting trail and out on $5 million & $500,000 bail.  Facteau & Fabian, with funding from the pharmaceutical & medical device industry under the name Public Citizen, are currently fighting these charges citing the First Amendment as their defense.   This is the unethical and illegal business model that’s being encouraged, replicated and rewarded within a very corrupt funding cycle.

While Johnson & Johnson is the most notable of the companies, privately held New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is the world’s largest venture capital firm with $17 billion in committed capital across 15 funds, and quite possibly worth more than Johnson & Johnson’s reported estimate of $133 billion.  Incubator ExploraMed founded by Josh Makower who also co-founded startup Acclarent with John Chang  received 44.5% of the company’s $100 million raised from NEA. It probably didn’t hurt that Makower is also an NEA Venture Partner and two other NEA Venture Partners Ryan Drant and John Nehra sat on the ExploraMed Board. Drant is still a current ExploraMed Board Member where Nehra recently retired from NEA and ExploraMed.

All three companies, Johnson & Johnson, NEA & ExploraMed are funding and feeding the medical device fraud cycle where the long-term damage of costing patients their health or lives and taxpayers billions is going unnoticed, until now.

The Art of Innovation

(Created as INCUBATOR INNOVATION) by ExploraMed Founder & NEA Venture Partner Josh Makower (first person presentation). (Unedited – metadata removed)

Josh Makower’s impressive CV affords him opportunities to address government agencies & Congress regarding repealing the 2.3% excise medical device tax and the medical device approval process known as the 510 k.

Josh Makower’s extensive reach through incubator ExploraMed, as a Venture Partner with NEA and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

The Sociopathic Business Model™ maintains the word “innovation” is often used as a justification for the manipulation of facts to break laws to meet ROI for investors without regard to patient needs.

Is Josh Makower implying his talents are on par with great male innovators in history? Is this insight as to how he views himself or thinks others should view his innovations?

Important Elements = Easily Manipulated

7

8

Novel IP = ExploraMed  & Acclarent sued for Patent Infringement

Using the startup buzz-words of “Diverse Team” but only as it relates to targeting the ‘customer,’ and NOT to be confused with company diversity.

11

Invent = Patent Infringement Assess = Manipulation of facts to FDA & employees

Financial Modeling = Falsely obtained Hypergrowth Marketing Strategy = Fraud Clinical & Regulatory Strategy = Fraudulently obtain 510 k Ethical Considerations = Joke Management Planning = Easily Manipulated

14

ExploraMed is an incubator in bed with Venture Capital firm NEA where the cost is to patients & taxpayers while the only paradigm shifting is money.

16

17

John Nehra and Ryan Drant were both NEA Venture Partners and on the ExploraMed Board which demonstrates they were knowledgeable & complicit with decisions made within the company.

19

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The Sociopathic Business Model™ maintains that companies engaging in unethical & or illegal activity will often change names to distance from crime.

22

Instantly Applying Lessons Learned = After Acclarent was sued for patent infringement, where they settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, Chang & Makower became hypervigilant in obtaining patents, even getting one that would not permit another balloon to enter through the natural opening of the nose.

Anton Clifford MoxiMed, Ted Bender Vibrynt, Ted Lamson NeoTract, John Chang Acclarent (ExploraMed’s greatest financial success)

25

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Don’t take in people with ideas already in mind = Just take their ideas Don’t allow any politics or BS =Don’t let regulatory laws like the 510 k stand in the way of innovation.

Acclarent-ExploraMed’s most successful incubated startup to date. The business model that Johnson & Johnson, requested, shared and emulated, and entrenched in both NEA & ExploraMed ventures who are still in 2015 funded by Johnson & Johnson for other startups.

Acclarent Co-Founded in 2004 by Josh Makower & John Chang

30

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Recurited (or in Josh’s words earlier a carefully selected) CEO William (Bill) Facteau who previously never held a position above middle manager. The Sociopathic Business Model™ maintains that in startups CEO’s are often carefully selected for their lack of experience as a means to easily manipulate them into doing what the Board of investors wants & not what’s best for patients, also known as a CE(n)O, because there’s no way this CEO is qualified.

33

Bill builds a great management team who bought into the manipulation of facts then sold to the salesforce & uses fear, threats & intimidation to execute the plan. QUITE A FEW THINGS MISSING FROM THIS SLIDE:

Click the bolded bars below for additional support documents.

35

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Able to shape culture = Manipulate

38

Not able to manipulate the CEO like at Acclarent

If they agree (accomplices) if not become (victims)

Only one person with an Einstein complex per company

Placing blame without taking accountability

Insult & demean

Created an unhappy/unproductive work environment

39

Choose a leader you are 100% confident you can manipulate “shares the vision,” willing to commit fraud pathologically

41

ExploraMed, Chairman & CEO, Associate Consulting Professor of Medicine Stanford Univeristy & NEA Venture Partner, Josh Makower lobbied Congress to repeal the 2.3 % medical device tax and through medical device funded advocacy group Citizen Petition tried to make the pathway to obtaining a 510(k) easier.  A pathological professional history of manipulating facts without shame, remorse guilt or accountability while not recognizing the rights of others from patent infringement to fraudulently obtaining a 510(k) should prevent ExploraMed’s Josh Makower from presenting to any government agency on behalf of the public, citizens, or even the industry.

Fortunately, in part Makower’s Acclarent was already on the federal government’s radar when the FDA struck down the Citizen Petition in 2014, requesting a faster pathway for the 510(k). Faster than purposely setting out to defraud the U.S. Government by fraudulently obtaining a 510 (k) Makower & Chang held the patent to?  Guessing that wasn’t in his presentation.   Manipulation was the key to success for the Acclarent sales model created by ExploraMed,  funded by NEA and replicated by Johnson & Johnson.

Part III:  Johnson & Johnson, NEA & ExploraMed  Following the Money.

UPDATED February 18, 2016, Did FDA Screw Up Its Reporting of Essure Deaths? (below original)

UPDATED November 24, 2015 (middle)

November 2, 2015

Part I: Venture Capital Firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is Paid to Kill Women 

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is the largest venture capital firm in the world according to Fortune (2011) who also refers to the company as The VC World’s Best-Kept Secret.  I’d have to disagree on that last part.  Anyone who worked for an incubated medical device startup funded by a venture capital firm knows of NEA.  Or in my case worked for an NEA funded startup.

However, there’s likely reason NEA prefers secrecy regarding the rest of the world because, NEA in part, funded two incubated startups, Conceptus & Gynecare who are currently part of the largest medical device war on women in U.S. history.  Frequent readers of this site may recognize those companies under their current names: Conceptus was sold to Essure’s Bayer in 2013 for $1.1 billion & Gynecare was sold to transvaginal mesh giants Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon in 1997 for $79 million.

NEA funded Conceptus turned Bayer Essure Victim Kandi McLean

Injured NEA funded Conceptus turned Bayer Permanent Birth Control Essure patient victims, known as Essure Problems, recently petitioned the FDA to remove from the permanent birth control product from the market.   Nickel-titanium coils are inserted through the vagina and into the fallopian tubes for permanent birth control which have migrated out of the fallopian tubes into the pelvic cavity, abdominal wall and in some cases back through the vaginal wall. Not only are the women experiencing nerve damage, extreme fatigue, and isolated pain at the migration site, there is serious concern over the body’s reaction to nickel, similar to what the metal on metal (MoM) hip victims are experiencing.

Mr. Budke testified in court against Johnson & Johnson on what would have been his 50th Wedding Anniversary to his wife, Joan, whom the jury found died due to complications from mesh.

NEA-funded Gynecare turned Johnson & Johnson Ethicon’s Gynecare TVT mesh products (made from polypropylene) used to treat stress urinary incontinence (SUI) or in pelvic organ prolapse (POP) is thought to have damaged women due to the incompatibility with human tissue which has caused migration, nerve damage, autoimmune disorders, and death. There are currently 26,000 cases against Johnson & Johnson alone in federal court under the Honorable Judge Goodwin, where there’s 83,000 against all transvaginal mesh device manufacturers.

These women, lucky enough to have not died from their procedures,  will all endure countless painful surgeries, where many are no longer able to work, or are wheelchair bound, with their families breaking apart due to the stress all while the once ventured back startups turned worldwide known conglomerates of Bayer and Johnson & Johnson continue placing blame on their victims without taking accountability.

When people ask, “How and why is this allowed to happen?”  The answer is simple:  Venture capital firms like NEA*, because they are free of accountability, are encouraged to replicate this pathological pattern of abuse where they’ve been rewarded billions of dollars while funding the medical device war on women. 

UPDATED: 

Frank Torti Jr. is a Venture Partner with NEA , a company known for funding medical device fraud.

FDA Acting Commissioner Frank Torti‘s leaked email to agency employees regarding the agency’s confidentiality policies has landed the commish in hot water with Sen. Charles Grassley, Dow Jones reports. Torti’s March 13 email tells employees to keep propriety information to themselves.

Read the entire memo from Torti Sr. censoring FDA whistleblowers and illegally refusing FOIA requests

FDA Acting Commissioner Frank Torti (2009), has a son,  Frank Torti Jr. who is an NEA Venture Partner.

@US_FDA Frank Torti Sr suppresses whistleblowers @NEAVC Frank Torti Jr funds medical device fraud #GodsOfFrauds https://t.co/h32kotBj52

— Melayna Lokosky (@MelaynaLokosky) November 25, 2015

back to original:

Venture Captial firm NEA funded the medical device war on women

Unlike pharmaceuticals,  which are usually produced in-house by large companies like Pfizer, medical devices are created by an incubator (idea for the product) that requires funding (venture capital) before becoming a startup.  Once a startup is funded, the clock starts ticking on getting the venture capital investors their ROI (return on investment).  

The problems the women are experiencing now  with Bayer’s Essure and Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon’s Gynecare mesh products likely were known and during the NEA funded startup phase; and, possibly under-reported or not reported because that information could hurt the sale price (lower) or even negate the sale if enough negative data was known.  Or worse, and more likely, the damaging information was known at the startup level, venture capital level (VC’s usually hold board seats to protect their investment) and the Bayer & Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon level and the companies knowingly & willingly gambled with women’s bodies for their profit.

NEA, also boasts they are the world’s largest venture capital firm with $17 billion in committed capital across 15 funds.  And one of those funds, no doubt includes Dr. Josh Makower, NEA Venture Partner and Founder Incubator ExploraMed in Mountain View, CA.

Again, I know this cycle well because I worked for startup Acclarent incubated by Josh Makower Founder of ExploraMed and NEA Venture Partner, where NEA had 44.5% stake of the $1oo million raised* to start Acclarent.  Acclarent sold to Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon** for $785 million in 2010.

*NEA was the principle venture capital firm along with Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation JJDC (Johnson & Johnson’s venture capital division)**, Delphi Ventures, and Meritech Capital Partners 

Acclarent CEO William (Bill) Facteau and VP of Sales & Training Patrick (Pat) Fabian put unethical and illegal pressure & demands on sales reps to generate unattainable goals, not based on facts, but rather using a formula that created the appearance of sales where the only goal was to obtain a high ROI for investors, including Acclarent Founder, ExploraMed Founder & NEA Venture Partner Josh Makower.

False Projections = Hypergrowth = Hyperinflated  Fraudulent Company Sale Price

This is, in part why the 2008 IPO failed, the company stated they decided to withdrawal the IPO due to market conditions, which is less true than the real reason.  Venture Capital investors would have lost money because sales were based on fraudulent hypergrowth & providing documents with false information to the SEC for an IPO could have landed quite a few someone’s in jail. 

Unicorn is a venture-backed startup valued at $1 billion or more. Valued is often confused with worth and in part why there’s so much fraud in startups. We’ll see more over-valuation in the tech market looking to Uber and Square as recent examples.

Look to Unicorns to lead the way in tech fraud in 2016

Regardless of market conditions Acclarent’s only option was to increase sales through false sales projections to hyperinflate the company’s valuation.  The valuation of a company is done any number of ways, which is why fraud is so rampant in startups. Acclarent based the valuation on total sales from 2009 (roughly $90 million reported) with the desired goal of getting 8-10 times that amount back for investors.

$90 million x 10 = $900 million

Acclarent sold  for $785 million

 NEA-funded Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon’s Acclarent CEO William (Bill) Facteau & VP of Sales Patrick (Pat) Fabian (former) were arrested & federally indicted, April 10, 2015, on 18 counts of securities fraud and crimes related to the sales and distribution of medical devices and currently awaiting trail while out on $5 million & $500,000 bail.

Venture Capital firm NEA with 44.5% of Acclarent and  NEA Venture Partner Josh Makower along with the Bayer & the other Johnson & Johnson acquisition lets the good ole boys brag $1,964,000,000 billion times over at the continued expense of an estimated 50,000 NEA-funded medical device injured women.

UPDATED February 18, 2016, Did FDA Screw Up Its Reporting of Essure Deaths? Qmed

Venture Capital firm NEA funded startup Conceptus which later sold to Bayer now known as Essure, permanent birth control. This demonstrates a pathological pattern of NEA funding medical device fraud, where they’ve made their money and leave a trail of injured or deceased bodies in their venture capital wake.

Part II Venture Capital firm NEA Funds Medical Device Fraud 

August 14, 2016

Many people say they want to create change but, do little to see that change occurs.  Signing & sharing this petition that goes directly to Judge Allison Burroughs, who is responsible for their sentencing, is the easiest step you can take to make the greatest impact to punish federally convicted startup medical device executives.  A Boston federal jury, under the direction of Judge Allison D. Burroughs, convicted Johnson & Johnson’s Acclarent’s CEO William (Bill) Facteau & Patrick (Pat) Fabian on 10 misdemeanors.  Facteau is currently CEO of venture capital-funded startup EarLens and Fabian is currently CCO of venture capital-funded startup NxThera.  Please sign and share this petition that goes DIRECTLY TO JUDGE ALLISON BURROUGHS and tell her that you won’t see illegal behavior encouraged, replicated and rewarded. As the sole federal whistleblower in this case, I’ve been removed from the industry, isn’t it time we do the same with the executives who’ve been convicted of federal crimes?

This case represents the first time a medical device was taken off the market before it could do potential damage to the community.  Discovered during the criminal trial, the adverse events were under-reported to FDA as we’ve seen with many other medical devices, long after patients were injured.

If you’ve been injured by Gynecare mesh, acquired by Johnson & Johnson or Conceptus birth control later acquired by Bayer renamed Essure, please understand that the world’s largest venture capital firm, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) funded these companies along with Acclarent later purchased by Johnson & Johnson. This is just the first step in exposing a long line of corruption where NEA has been paid to kill women.  Please do your part, sign and share the petition that goes directly to the judge responsible for sentencing. Thank you to MAM-Mesh Awareness Movement, Mesh Problems, Mesh Medical News Desk and all the women and men who have signed and shared the petition.  If you would like your organization’s name added to the list supporting this petition please comment below and I’ll and your organization.

Updated: September 26, 2016 Below Original: Motion to Dismiss

Updated: September 23, 2016

Big Pharma urges acquittal for ex- Johnson & Johnson Acclarent execs – MassDevice

September 20, 2016

#SerialKillerCEO Johnson & Johnson Alex Gorsky

Updated: What? Employees who expose the negative truth about a company and call an internal “ethics” hotline get retaliated against? Looks like Wells Fargo has training wheels on compared to Johnson & Johnson regarding both fraud & retaliations claims.  Well, at least Wells Fargo isn’t killing anyone, same can’t be said for Johnson & Johnson. If employees fear retaliation they won’t come forward and consumers & patients will continue to get harmed.  This site is not only for consumer/patient victims, it’s also for employee victims like myself or Wells Fargo retaliated employee Bill Bado or the many of thousands of us that have lost our jobs or careers because of executive executed fraud.  

Again, there varying degrees of victimization but every victim deserves the opportunity to seek justice and injured victims need the help of injured employees to create the kind of change necessary to reduce consumer or patient injury and to forced accountability on the executives who knowingly and willingly committed fraud at ALL of our expense.

Remember to think of your company’s HR (or ethics) department like your spouse’s divorce attorney, they’re not there to protect you. And if a company ignores EECO rights (sexism, racism or retaliation) it represents a trigger that the company is far more likely engaged in far greater unethical and or illegal behavior that harms more than just one person, just ask the 5,300 terminated Wells Fargo employees, or the Johnson & Johnson DePuy Synthes or Acclarent employees laid off. Consumer or patient victims may not understand what sexism, racism or retaliation has to do with fraud that ultimately caused their injury but the employees do! 

Former Wells Fargo employees claim retaliation. https://t.co/VzT0sFd0O4

— Skoler Abbott (@SkolerAbbott) September 22, 2016

By now most of you know I was a federal whistleblower against Johnson & Johnson and subsidiary Acclarent, where a medical device, the Relieva Microflow Spacer,  was removed from the market before it could harm to patients.  I started this website, while still under federal seal, writing about my own case using my own name and was careful not to break the seal (or expose myself as the whistleblower). It is to our knowledge, the first time a whistleblower, under federal seal took such a strong action against the DOJ’s wishes using my First Amendment rights.  This was not ego driven or about being “right” it was about doing what’s right not just for myself and the other victims of workplace abuse but for all patient victims, specifically Johnson & Johnson’s, with the hope of bringing much needed media attention to a company, whose CEO Alex Gorsky, is nothing more than a serial killer hiding behind subsidiaries.

I’ve spoken to several journalists since the news broke in late July, who wanted to know if the reports of my receiving $3.5 million from the DOJ’s $18 million recovery from Johnson & Johnson were accurate (I can assure you, as can my CPA, that amount never hit my bank account), or if I’d sued any other company for sexual harassment (implying I sued Acclarent for sexual harassment, I didn’t & sexism, experienced in the workplace, especially prevalent in venture capital-funded startups, is different-but a Silicon Valley reporter should know that), who I “dated” at my former company (because criminals, ethical by nature, would never create a diversion to distract from their own negative truth), and yes, a female reporter asked me that question and if she’s never experienced sexism in the workplace, I guess a better question is who did she “date” at her workplace.?  No question was as insulting or offensive as “Didn’t you try and reach out to media during this time (while under seal) to draw attention to medical device fraud?”

Seriously? I started this site, Killing My Career, (not exactly subtle) in January/February 2014 and the federal seal wasn’t lifted until July 22, 2016; and, none of the major outlets came knocking until after all the heavy lifting was done. Instead of reporters asking the real questions, like:

What does the DOJ do with the remaining $14.5 million, why don’t taxpayers know or have a say?

Why didn’t the DOJ go after ill-gotten gains of any Acclarent employee who made over $1 million?

Why would the DOJ exclude the whistleblower from legal strategy in the criminal case? (That’s not the same as testifying, nor should that be the goal of any AG in this country-the case should be strong enough without the whistleblower’s testimony or they haven’t done their job-the whistleblower did theirs, it’s not their job to do the AGs too).

How could a federal judge ask a federal whistleblower, without the presence of her own counsel, in front of the defense and prosecution, in her chambers and on the record, to stop using her First Amendment right to write about the criminal trial while the indicted executives were using the First Amendment as their defense for committing fraud?

How could that same federal judge allow or not know that one of the criminal defense attorneys was staring down the federal whistleblower as a means to threaten & intimidate, “in her courtroom?”

How could the same federal judge allow the defense team to lie in opening remarks and not tell the jury specifically what was not wholly truthful?

Why wasn’t, among others, Josh Makower, patent holder of what became the Stratus Microflow Spacer, founder of startup Acclarent and NEA General Partner who helped fund the startup, arrested and tried in federal court?

OH YEAH! (Kool-Aid Man, Family Guy)

How could former Acclarent CEO William (Bill) Facteau laugh when the prosecution read an email he sent to a doctor complete with a packet of grape Kool-Aid, for other internal staff to “peruse” to show he bullied the doctor back in line for fraud?

Why wasn’t the SEC involved since there was clearly shareholder fraud?

What happened to the original disgorgement amount Johnson & Johnson was supposed to pay of $30 million-$40 million (for each device sold since not a single one was ever used on label first?)

Why are we allowing two corrupt entities (DOJ & JNJ) negotiate on behalf of the American people behind closed doors?

At what point does the seal protect the two corrupt entities at the expense of the American people?

How many Corporate Integrity Agreements (CIA) does one company get to sign before the DOJ realizes the company has no integrity?

Why is SEC or DOJ allowing Johnson & Johnson to enter into or acquire any new companies until all their mesh, hip, talc cases are settled (that means money in victim’s accounts-not theoretical-but in their accounts)?

Why isn’t Johnson & Johnson banned from receiving any U.S. Government monies including subsidies for the development of vaccines for a minimum of 10 years?

Why isn’t Johnson & Johnson barred from all federal contracts (CMS/ Medicare, Medicaid, TriCare) until they can remain off the False Claims list for five years?

Why did Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation (JJDC) invest money into now convicted ex Acclarent CEO William (Bill) Facteau’s new startup EarLens?

How didn’t the female  reporter from Silicon Valley know that Johnson & Johnson’s venture capital firm invested in Acclarent prior to the sale in January 2010?

Why weren’t Johnson & Johnson executives and venture capital firm/Acclarent board members prosecuted?

How is it that traveling killing caravan of  Johnson & Johnson’s CEO Alex Gorsky, Worldwide Ethicon Medical Device Executive Gary Pruden and follow-behind clean up gal, last known at DePuy Synthes, Bridget Ross, not all sharing a jail cell with Bernie Madoff?

Those are just a few, off the top of my head.

It’s just easier, you know, to imply I did my job on my back and cashed in on a big payday. Well, let’s break that down for nothing more than context.  I was making $250,000 a year at Acclarent, this case was filed July 2011, I was without a job from July 2012 on and the case finally settled July 2016.   After taxes and attorneys share (that’s different and above and beyond attorney’s fees-and trust Delaney Kester was worth their weight in platinum) I’m left with less than $700,000. I would have made more money if I’d kept my mouth shut; but, again, that’s not why I did this.   It’s not a complaint but it is a reality. I didn’t do this to make friends with the Attorney Generals, the federal judge and certainly not the defense or their assclowns of a defense team: Leo Cunningham of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati, Frank Libby of Libby Hoopes or Steptoe & Johnson’s attorney who tried (unsuccessfully & laughably) to stare down a federal whistleblower in a federal courtroom in front of her FBI handler, the man who loves the sound of his own voice, Reid Weingarten.

One reporter asked if “I was sure?” that I didn’t make more on the settlement.  Yes, I was, and maybe now she could get off the idea that any whistleblower does this for the money.  I did tell her that her accusatory tone of doubt was abusive and that she should refocus her questions on the facts of the case or more importantly the hundreds-of-thousands of other Johnson & Johnson victims that still needed media attention.

If employees fear retaliation they won’t come forward and patients will continue to get harmed. 

I became a whistleblower to expose the negative truthful information about venture capital funded startups that use innovation as a manipulation to evade the law, leaving behind a wake of injured patient victims.  NEA (New Enterprise Associates) who in part funded Acclarent also in part funded Gynecare (purchased by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon) & what’s now know as Bayer’s Essure. Perhaps this overzealous Silicon Valley female reporter would like to ask all these female victims of corporate abuse who all they “dated” at the companies that injured them.

Tomorrow, Covington LLP (where former US Attorney General Eric Holder works) who are also the attorneys representing Johnson & Johnson along with my own attorneys from Delaney Kester, will meet in front of Judge Young in Boston Federal court to discuss my retaliation claim for wrongful termination. Why ever would a company worth $65.8 billion, who paid $785 million for Acclarent and only paid the DOJ $18 million in civil damages, who had to deal with the humiliation of indicted & convicted former Acclarent executives, William (Bill) Facteau & Patrick (Pat) Fabian, currently awaiting sentencing October 16, in Judge Allison Burrough’s Boston Federal courtroom, ever retaliate against a female medical device rep who lost her 13-year, hard earned career for exposing the negative truth Johnson & Johnson would rather have remained hidden?

I’m one of the least injured victims of in a long line of Johnson & Johnson created victims where the company places blame without taking accountability and further still insults and demeans their victims by filing abusive motions to dismiss or appeals despite knowing they under-reported adverse events, shredded documents associated with mass tort trials or targeted minorities knowingly & willingly with cancer causing agents. Not until you cry on the phone with a man who lost a testicle due to mesh, or hear a woman and how she can no longer have sex because the mesh caused internal damage or perforated her vaginal wall cutting her husband’s penis, or you read through your tears an email from a family thanking you for exposing Johnson & Johnson, who settled out of court in their case, because their father, who should have been celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary with their mother, was instead testifying in court on her behalf since she died before her trial date, do you know the pain of Johnson & Johnson victims.

There are different degrees of victimization at the hands of Johnson & Johnson, but each victim, myself included, deserves justice on the way to becoming an empowered survivor and, that only happens through forced legal accountability.  I fully suspect, right out of The Sociopathic Business Model™playbook, that Johnson & Johnson will file a motion to dismiss my retaliation claim because that’s what unrepentant, pathologically abusive companies do to further insult and demean their victims. The one thing the female Silicon Valley reporter was right about, was that everyone in Silicon Valley is looking at the outcome of the Facteau & Fabian sentencing “to see how much they can get away with in the future.”  Judge Allison Burroughs was more concerned about giving the now convicted criminals a “fair trial” that she failed to protect the whistleblower in her own courtroom, so I’m not too hopeful she do any better of a job of protecting the American public from these criminal so  I’ll make Johnson & Johnson a deal, I’ll drop my retaliation claim if Facteau & Fabian are sentenced to jail and Gorsky, Pruden and Ross are immediately fired.  Now that’s money well spent.

If you think you’re a victim of employment abuse, force legal accountability as a means to create positive change and become an empowered survivor, plus nothing is more fun that pissing off a bunch over overpriced defense attorneys.

UPDATED: September 26, 2016 As predicted by The Sociopathic Business Model™ based on the pathological history of Johnson & Johnson’s abuse towards their victims, created by their company’s own unethical & illegal behavior, they filed a motion to dismiss my retaliation case from the False Claims (or whistleblower) case.  My response:

My attorneys response, I suspect, equally succinct.

September 18 to September 24, 2016

#WinnersOfTheWeak

#TheSociopathicBusinessModel

[poll id=”2″]

Tone-deaf, Mylan CEO, Heather Bresch, maker of EpiPen’s, comment “no one’s more frustrated than me,” regarding the media’s sudden attention to the 500% price hike surrounding the company’s device used to counteract a potentially fatal allergic reaction, or anaphylaxis, really says it all.  She’s frustrated that people found out about the steady price increase which was necessary to offset Mylan’s acquisition of Merck’s generic business in 2007.  Or Bresch is frustrated that the  truth regarding her father, West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who appointed her mother Gayle Manchin, to president of the National Association of State Board of Education (NASBE), exposed a conflict-of-interest that reached whole new unethical level at best (or illegal at worst breaking anti-trust laws).  NASBE launched the “epinephrine policy initiative” which in collaboration with Mylan, created school protocol which involved selling the EpiPen to schools.  

This is certainly enough information for us as taxpayers and voters to start making some decisions because our votes and purchases have power.  Bresch testified before Congress, hopefully the Attorney General & SEC will look into the anti-trust angle of this case but, anyone who has the opportunity to vote out Senator Manchin in 2019 should. Ask your doctor or pharmacist to ensure you don’t purchase any of Mylan’s other products and take to social media any time you buy a competitors product.   Remember when people are caught and forced accountable that’s different than coming forward of their own accord.  The family got caught.

xxxx

Big Pharma urges acquittal for ex-Acclarent execs https://t.co/g7DuHu2fKn #meddevice

— MassDevice (@MassDevice) September 23, 2016

xxxx

Oh course they do…and I’d like to point to how the media refers to the industry as Big Pharma when in fact Johnson & Johnson’s Acclarent is a medical device company.  But, the media “does tend to make broad brush claims of “bias.””

Pfizer, responsible for the world’s largest DOJ fine in history of $2.3 billion and Bayer, the company buying MonsterMonsanto and injuring women with permanent birth control Essure, not surprisingly came out to defend the convicted criminals of Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Acclarent.  Johnson & Johnson is defended by white collar crime firm Covington, where former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, walked across the street and rejoined the firm he was working for before and after his tenure as on of the most powerful men in the United States Government.

Pharmaceutical giants including Bayer (ETR:BAYN) and Pfizer(NYSE:PFE) filed a motion backing ex Johnson & Johnson –Acclarent executives William Facteau and Patrick Fabian, urging the Massachusetts federal court to acquit them of their misdemeanor charges.

Former Acclarent CEO Facteau and ex-sales vice president Fabian wereconvicted in July on 10 misdemeanor counts of “introducing adulterated and misbranded medical devices into interstate commerce.” Earlier this month, Judge Allison Burroughs lifted the bail and travel restrictions that were imposed on the pair.

Members of the Medical Information Working Group, a non-government entity composed of pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers, filed an amicus brief Sept. 20, urging the court to acquit both men in light of the “extremely ambiguous” regulatory framework that characterizes what companies can and cannot say about their products.

Mass Device

Nothing like criminals defending criminals.  Please get active and tell Judge Allison Burroughs to send venture capital funded startup executives William (Bill) Facteau & Patrick (Pat) Fabian to jail. #OneClickToTheClink.

Former employees file class action against Wells Fargo https://t.co/eefMid0fr0 pic.twitter.com/3sQfYVVnxF

— Reuters Politics (@ReutersPolitics) September 24, 2016

Venture capital funded startup employees take note of what the Wells Fargo Employees are doing.

.@WellsFargo CEO John Stumpf should resign, give back the money he took while the scam was going on, & be criminally investigated.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) September 20, 2016

Whistleblowers from Wells Fargo went on record to report they got fired as retaliation for reporting massive fraud. https://t.co/6knQkIJJC0

— Thomas Drake (@Thomas_Drake1) September 22, 2016

And speaking of #OneClickToTheClink, Wells Fargo CEO John Strumpf, who fired 5,300 employees who were directed by management to open up unnecessary bank accounts to increase sales by defrauding their own customers is having a really, really bad week, and it’s about time. Workplace retaliation is real and why so many employees are fearful of coming forward like now former Wells Fargo employee Bill Bado who was fired for calling the company’s ethics line. And despite the media referring to fired employees as “angry and disgruntled,” they fail to ever ask the simple question, “Why are employees angry and disgruntled?” But that would require the media to actually do more than cut and paste a press release.  Trying to fix the company from the inside when the company doesn’t want to fixed is a sobering moment for many employees, myself included.  As an employee you have to think of your HR or ethics department like your spouse’s divorce attorney, not there for you!

@FortuneMagazine Deluded venture capital funded startup executives: #KnowYourMarket, WE WANT TO DRIVE CARS, stop selling what we don’t want!

— KillingMyCareer (@MelaynaLokosky) September 24, 2016

No, venture capital funded startup executives at Lyft (who are little puppets for the VCs)  just stop trying to sell the public on self-driving cars, or products that a bunch of dudes sitting in a room thought we “all needed” from  Google’s (1/2 empty) Glass, to Apple’s Watch (out the delusions are real at Apple), just stop! Creating market is good if it fills a need people did not know they needed but shoving self-driving cars and wearable tech down the throats of those outside the thoughtless “think tanks” of Silicon Valley will certainly “all but end” the careers of executives like Lyft’s Co-founder & president, John Zimmer, long before 2025 (thankfully)!

Dear readers: Please stop calling us ‘the media.’ There is no such thing. https://t.co/GglnWy0rqJ

— Paul Farhi (@farhip) September 23, 2016

And my personal #WinnerOfTheWeak Washington Post’s Paul Farhi who opined a very tone-deaf letter to readers: Dear Readers: Please Quit Calling Us The Media: There Is No Such Thing. The same “broad brush claims of “bias”” Farhi asserts “the readers”  of making regarding “the media” demonstrates his own lack of self-awareness or certainly the inconsistent and rather contradictory way his industry refers to Big Pharma & Wall Street with the same “broad brush clams of “bias.””

None of us want to lumped with the worst of our industry but, that only changes when we protect employees that come forward and  promote those who are working ethically and within the guidelines of the laws opposed to encouraging, replicating and rewarding unethical and illegal behavior in the worst of each of our industries.

Theranos Is Shutting Its Blood-Test Facilities, Shedding 40 Percent Of Workers https://t.co/L0VNmqGUSP

— NPR (@NPR) October 6, 2016

The Sociopathic Business Model™ proved that venture capital-funded startup fraud costs employees their jobs, consumers & patients safety, and long-term shareholders and taxpayers millions via the Acclarent Case Study.  In this case study,  I was the sole employee whistleblower for a venture capital funded-startup, Acclarent where the medical device fraud was knowingly & willingly acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2010 for $785 million and the company complicity continued selling until 2013 when the FDA required the removal of the useless, fraudulently approved medical device.  I was able to expose a pattern of fraud the DOJ was not yet familiar, helped recovered $18 million for the government, removed a worthless medical device that caused needless procedures solely for the sake of profit, and set the wheels in motion for former Acclarent executives William (Bill) Facteau & Patrick (Pat) Fabian’s arrest, federal indictment, conviction, and currently awaiting sentencing under Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston.  By exposing this previously unknown pattern of fraud, the DOJ & SEC intervened in venture capital-funded startup fraud at Theranos.

As author of Killing My Career, while still under federal seal which precluded me from disclosing I was the whistleblower in the five year Johnson & Johnson Acclarent DOJ investigation,  predicted this pattern in other venture capital-funded startups like Theranos, who today announced a 40% reduction of workers under the#RedFlag of “reinventing” the company.  Consumer Alert: Any time a company “reorganizes” or “reinvents” or “rebrands” it’s usually masking fraud.

Employee job loss isn’t a reflection on employee’s performance, it’s a direct reflection of executive mismanagement where the company has encouraged, replicated and rewarded unethical and or illegal behavior.  Fraud is not a sustainable sales model; but, fraud does follow a very specific pattern.

#BoardWhores

Sentencing was moved to November 2016

Venture capital (VC) firms select and groom an easily manipulated a first time CEO (or CEnO), eager to prove their worth in the industry and willing to use innovation as a manipulation to break the law, from Acclarent’s first CEO William (Bill) Facteau to Elizabeth Holmes CEO of Theranos which in turn creates #GodsOfFrauds. The only difference between the two executives is that Holmes is now disgraced and a convicted Facteau is celebrated as CEO of vc startup EarLens.

During the criminal trial of former Johnson & Johnson Acclarent CEO William Facteau, one of his attorneys, Reid Weingarten, of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, falsely claimed that Facteau was a job creator, when if fact the opposite was true.  Post-acquisition employees lost their jobs, including both Facteau & Fabian, when Johnson & Johnson terminated them early from their two year retention contract.  Again, fraud is not a sustainable sales model.  Weingarten, also stated at Acclarent made roughly 50 people millionaires but neglected to mention they weren’t any of the employees that were lied to, threatened or intimidated or executed fraud on behalf of investors.

Look for the #RedFlags when looking for employment, especially in venture capital-funded startups, or before making a purchase (and yes, medical devices & testing is not only purchased by hospitals  & facilities they’re also purchased by consumers and their private health insurance companies. )

Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes should be held legally accountable just like former Johnson & Johnson Acclarent executives William (Bill) Facteau and Patrick (Pat) Fabian should grab their seats federal prison during their November sentencing, and they should save a seat for Holmes and all the venture capital #BoardWhores who knowingly & willingly fund fraud.

UPDATED: October 12, 2016 Partner Fund Management Inconsistently Sues Theranos While Trying To Hedge Their Hedge Fund Bets to Recover From Fraud They Created.  Below Original Story  #TheSociopathicBusinessModel

Oh and look who stopped by to say hello:

UPDATED: October 5, 2016 Theranos Lays Off 340 Employees. Below Original Story

Updated: September 6, 2016

Venture capital-funded startup Theranos’ chief scientist commits suicide: Ian Gibbons was one of CEO Elizabeth Holmes’ first hires; which also means he was likely one of the first employees manipulated into thinking that innovation was above the law.  False projections based on VC ROI (and not what the market can bear) to give the appearance of hypergrowth for an overvaluation is fraud better known as The Sociopathic Business Model™ and all too common in startups that put profit before employees, patients and even taxpayers.  The truth does not need a narrative, only criminals do.

Update: May 26, 2016

Readers of Killing My Career could easily predict venture capital funded startup healthcare @theranos fraud. pic.twitter.com/2XowRoJ84X

— KillingMyCareer (@MelaynaLokosky) May 26, 2016

Theranos faces a class action lawsuit for deceptively marketing blood testing.

Update: May 12, 2016

Theranos’ COO retires as the troubled bio-tech startup overhauls its organizational structure https://t.co/H428VhdekW

— Technolopy (@technolopypro) May 12, 2016

Theranos President & COO, Sunny Balwani “decides” to “retire.” That’s precious, pending a federal investigation, he “decided” to “retire.” Nope, CMS is gunning for Balwani and founder Elizabeth Holmes to prevent them from participating in CMS (Medicare/Medicaid) contracts for two years, similar to what happened to Synthes executives in 2011. Meaning no healthcare company would hire them interested in insurance reimbursement. That’s that equivalent to getting burned in the industry.  It’s about time. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out Sunny!

Update: April 19, 2016

VC funded Theranos a subject of a criminal investigation, just like NEA funded startup Acclarent acquired by #JNJ https://t.co/41xBCiAAgO

— KillingMyCareer (@MelaynaLokosky) April 19, 2016

April 14, 2016

This site often writes about venture capital (VC)-funded startup fraud that costs employees their jobs, consumers and patients their safety or lives, and post-IPO or acquisition long-term shareholders & taxpayers billions while VCs make 8-10 times their initial investment back; and, this fraud cycle is encouraged, replicated and rewarded in the industry, better known as The Sociopathic Business Model™.

This week, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in an unprecedented move, proposed banning VC funded startup Theranos’s CEO Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos’s president Sunny Balwani for two years after learning that the company did not fix what regulators referred to as major problems within the laboratories.  This is a great start! CMS prevented costly fraud and sent a very scary message to VCs.

Theranos was approved for one test yet was fraudulently offering 250 tests which means the sales projections (in part, how the company valuations are determined) were based on the company selling all 250 tests; and in turn eventually getting reimbursed by Medicare/Medicaid and then private health insurance.  Reimbursement is what would make the startup attractive for an IPO or acquisition.   Regardless if Holmes is removed from the company, the company won’t be able to support their $9 billion valuation because they can’t sell all 250 tests but only one test. CMS caught on to fraud before they & taxpayers paid for it, which is unique, thanks in part to what they learned from another venture capital-funded startup Acclarent which was sold to Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon and not surprisingly underperforming post-acquisition due to healthcare fraud, and exposing that fraud is known as The MMpiHer Method™.

CMS trying to impose a $10,000 a day fine until the Theranos is compliant is like the rest of us paying a penny a day for some nuisance. Taking Holmes out of the game is a good start (and this isn’t the usual Silicon Valley sexism this is just straight up fraud) and, she should be banned for life, not just two years.  CMS, unlike SEC who clearly have no interest in preventing fraud,  also need to go after the venture capital #BoardWhores because that leads to #GodsOfFrauds.

Noticeably absent and a RED FLAG is that Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is missing from the Board and Balwani remains while the company is not short on former government officials:

Sunny Balwani: President and COO – Director

Riley P. Bechtel – Director

William H. Foege

William H. Frist

Henry A. Kissinger

Richard Kovacevich

James N. Mattis – Director

Sam Nunn

William J. Perry

Gary Roughead

George P. Shultz

Theranos Venture Capital:

ATA Ventures

Continental Ventures

Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ)

Partner Fund Management

Tako Ventures

The Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust

Walgreens

Not until venture capital firms are held accountable for funding startup fraud, from the healthcare industry to the tech industry, can we expect to see positive change. In the meantime, Theranos VCs potentially losing hundreds of millions might be what’s needed to get Silicon Valley to stop funding fraud and it’s certainly helping the rest of us take the billion dollar blinders off of companies like Theranos and (perhaps Uber) and see them for what they really are: fraud.

UPDATED: October 5, 2016 Theranos Lays Off 350 Employees

UPDATED October 12, 2106: Partner Fund Management sues Theranos for SEC fraud 

Nope, venture capital knowingly & willingly funds startup fraud and doesn’t get to hedge their hedge fund bets now that Theranos has been exposed as a fraud, thanks in part to another VC-funded startup case, Acclarent.  Partner Fund Management isn’t a victim of Theranos they, along with all the other VCs, are responsible for funding the fraud in the first place.  The ROI sales model was based on 250 tests even though Theranos was only FDA approved for one test. It’s false projections based on investor ROI (not what the market can bear) to give the appearance of hypergrowth for an overvaluation; and, that’s fraud! It’s nice to see the VCs stuck holding a worthless sack for once.

Click here for more on understanding the VC-funded startup healthcare sales model

Click here for more information on Medicare/Medicaid & private health insurance as it relates to fraud

Updated: October 13, 2016 Another one bites the dust…

As predicted by The Sociopathic Business Model™, in August 2015, when TEGNA, NBC, 12 News, decided to release Fay Fredricks, after 14 years of loyal employment, without so much as the opportunity to thank her loyal viewers, this would not end well for more than a few.  It gives me great pleasure to announce President & General Manager 12 News, John Misner…is down.  Sadly, he’s joining Arizona State University with a dual appointment as faculty of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, my Alma mater.  It saddens me, as a successful federal whistleblower, to now not financially support ASU for their poor decision to hire the ethically challenged Misner.

Amazing how one mismanaged decision took down three careers, well and if fact-based evidence over time is any indication of the future, it still may claim a fourth.

Updated: May 5, 2016

#ManDown

TEGNA, NBC, 12 News Vice President Mark Casey, retires, who didn’t see this coming? Certainly not frequent readers of this site or those familiar with The Sociopathic Business Model™, which predicted the departure of Casey & crew back in September.  Anyone else thinking John Misner & Patti Dennis might be a little nervous?  You know what really should help their numbers? No, not #RacismForRatings but rather #CurtisInCars. All shame in their game, as in shameful play to try and help the failing ratings ripping off people who are funny or have talent with this bit.  Just read the fucking news without your opinion, that’s all people want.  But pandering is working out great, isn’t it?

Who doesn’t love #AlGreen? @mcurtis12news @JohnjayVanEs @richberra sure do! #CurtisinCars @12News at 10 p.m. pic.twitter.com/mffXBq1X0o

— Cassie Rathbun (@CassieRathbun) May 4, 2016

September 2, 2015

What does one of the largest news outlets in the world NOT want you to know, that they blocked a whistleblower on social media???

UPDATED: Original story below: Sandra Kotzambasis TEGNA NBC 12 News KPNX News Director announced to staff she’s leaving and tearfully packed up her office.

Are news stations like TEGNA NBC 12 News Phoenix creating #RacismForRatings? The possible exploitation of new female Latina anchor, Vanessa Ruiz is just another example of workplace abuse where racism and sexism are encouraged, replicated and rewarded in a corrupt business model; and, that corruption starts at the top.

TEGNA NBC 12 News new female Latina anchor Vanessa Ruiz recently came from the LA market where she was a reporter for another NBC affiliate. Take a listen below to a story Ruiz did in July just prior to starting in Phoenix and pay particular attention to the annunciation of the city Los Angeles.

“I don’t intend to come to Phoenix and do things ‘my way,’ however my goal is to stay authentic to who I am.”

Ruiz claims on air that people were unhappy with the way she was pronouncing names of the cities in Phoenix and that she’s just trying to stay authentic to who she is. However, Ruiz pronounced the city of Los Angeles without staying authentic while actually working in Los Angeles.  That’s inconsistent & contradictory to language to action and a trigger for the unethical behavior of manipulating the facts while not recognizing the rights of others which is further supported below: Ruiz was on air in Phoenix since August 14, 2015 yet the claims of viewer racism only came to light after 14 year station veteran Fay Fredricks’ final day on August 28, 2015 (who Ruiz is replacing). September  2, 2015 the PR machine of TEGNA 12 News in the form of the station’s news director, Sandra Kotzambasis told Buzzfeed’s Stephanie McNeal “that a lot of viewers also questioned the way Ruiz pronounced the name of a colleague, weather anchor Caribe Devine. ”  Funny thing is that Caribe Devine has been pronouncing her name just fine for the decade she’s been on 12 News.  News stations are making a push to exploit Latinas in the industry to over exaggerate their heritage by “roll their R’s or are asked to dye their hair” to help the station gain more marketshare with the Latino community.  So much so explained by an industry insider that “playing-up heritage” is heavily implied during the interview process.  This is plain and simple exploitation of an employee to manipulate the viewers unethically for the benefit of the profit of new stations.   The news stations are insulting and demeaning not only their employee but their loyal viewers (making them out to be racists)* for their own profit which is textbook for The Sociopathic Business Model™   What Buzzfeed’s Stephanie McNeal & more recent The New York Times FERNANDA SANTOS and CHRISTINE HAUSER failed to do is ask if station managers asked Ruiz to “roll her R’s” to try and gain greater market share in the Latino community? Unethically manipulate facts trying to create race issues to increase their Latino market share & profits at while exploiting their new Latina female anchor and loyal viewers? *there are always going to be abusive people in any market on any given topic: race, religion, sexism but are station’s claims created or conflated for their benefit?   Again the timing of the #RacismForRatings campaign which TEGNA NBC 12News wants to make national isn’t for the benefit of Ruiz or to bring about social awareness to the topic of racism and that’s best demonstrated on social media exposing their own calculated platform for profit:

.@BuzzFeed wrote about our own @VanessaR12News and the national attention she’s getting right now #12news http://t.co/bJigUM4xjO — 12 News (@12News) September 2, 2015

This is very telling: Note it’s about the station’s anchor getting national attention (which ties back to ratings for the station). Ruiz doesn’t get a bonus for national attention (under contract) but I’d be willing to bet executives do if ratings jump.

TEGNA NBC 12 News made no mention of trying to advance awareness in racism but instead spent countless minutes each day this week promoting their anchor on what looks like a fabricated (in this instance) “problem” to help their own platform of attracting through manipulation a larger Latino market share.

Cut to an election year where immigration is a hot button and one that’s easily exploited if people don’t pay attention to the obvious signs of manipulation.

Tegna NBC 12 New Vanessa Ruiz Professional Vicitm

Original Story

This site writes a lot about people who lack in self-awareness, manipulate the facts without remorse or guilt while shifting blame & pathologically feel glibly entitled to forgiveness despite lack of accountability, known as professional victims.   Gwyneth Paltrow, Lena Dunham & Josh Duggar are just a few examples of professional victims. These people often incorrectly refer to people who force accountability as haters.

.@BuzzFeed wrote about our own @VanessaR12News and the national attention she’s getting right now #12news http://t.co/bJigUM4xjO — 12 News (@12News) September 2, 2015

It’s not shocking to anyone in Phoenix that the launch of Vanessa Ruiz at Tegna’s NBC 12 News has been anything but smooth (in fact there’s been buzz they’ll need to do a re-launch). Every employer has the right to make changes to their staff; but, not while unethically & possibly illegally manipulating facts, or insulting & demeaning others by not recognizing their rights; and, that’s exactly what Tegna NBC executives John Misner, Mark Casey and Patti Dennis knowingly & willfully chose to do to viewer favorite & 14 year, 12 News veteran Fay Fredricks, when they replaced her on-air with Vanessa Ruiz without so much as a word about Fredricks.

Are white male media executives in Phoenix fraudulently manipulating race for ratings? Could it also be sexist & racist if executives pressured Ms. Ruiz to unethically play up her heritage which she didn’t at her previous station just two months ago at an NBC affiliate in Los Angeles?

I’m sure the executives were banking on summer vacations, short memories or just thought it was ok to insult & demean their Tegna NBC 12 News loyal viewers with this poorly executed slight-of-on-air-hand. As previously stated this wasn’t the fault of Fredricks or Ruiz but solely on the station executives. Friday was Fay Fredricks last day on Tegna’s NBC 12 News where she wasn’t provided the opportunity to thank loyal viewers (station manipulation of facts while not recognizing the rights of others (Fredricks & loyal viewers).  ABC 15 Phoenix announced yesterday that they nabbed Fredricks to join their station.  Today Buzzfeed did what I refer to as a “planted” story/nonstory or as this site refers to it as #PRSpin to try and unethically make Vanessa Ruiz look like a victim (and technically she is under The Sociopathic Business Model™ but at the hands of her employers Tegna NBC 12 News and NOT Fredricks OR viewers).  Buzzfeed reporter Stephanie McNeal’s piece  This News Anchor Just Shut Down The Haters Who Criticized Her For Her Accent plays right into the hands of Tegna’s NBC 12 News likely (and suspected goal) of trying to get more Spanish-speaking viewers but not organically by earning their loyalty but by manipulating facts.  *It’s important to note the timing of the Buzzfeed story after Fay Fredricks was already gone, wouldn’t people have been complaining (if there were really complaints about Ruiz’s accent) for the last two weeks? Why make it a story now and not when it first happened? Hmmm, that seems like a manipulation of facts to me. 

Twitter Blocked is often a sign that an unethical person does not want to take accountability for their own negative truth or accountability.

#PRSpinUNSpun: 12 News has long been the staple for an affluent market & because executives often don’t know what they’re doing they may unethically place blame back on employees and or viewers without taking accountability for their own station’s failures (lower numbers and less ad revenue are just a few hypothetical examples.)  Again each station has the right to make changes but not at the expense of employees and viewers. It’s almost like Tegna NBC 12 News is trying to manipulate facts while potentially changing their formats (to possibly attract a larger Spanish speaking population) by inciting a race riot in Phoenix.  This isn’t about how Ruiz pronounces things (that’s not the same as saying racism doesn’t exist) it’s about the people of Phoenix not liking her, in part for lack of accountability much of that responsibility falls back on the executives at Tegna’s NBC 12 News (who should be fired) as they now try and what looks like are-launch  Ruiz at the expense of all Phoenix viewers.  This is especially offensive to people who have experienced real racism in the state as 12 News it appears is exploiting that pain for their potential profit.

#Twitterblocked appears to be the answer for Tegna’s NBC 12 News team to deal with accountability when the negative facts they’d rather remain hidden are exposed.

It’s interesting to note how Vanessa Ruiz pronounces Los Angeles on air July 7, 2015, for NBC affiliate Channel 4 in Southern CA. which is inconsistent & contradictory* to her claim to “stay authentic,”:

“I don’t intend to come to Phoenix and do things ‘my way,’ however my goal is to stay authentic to who I am.”

They cited their station’s own news director (Sandra Kotzambasis) as a source for Ruiz hiding behind the fact that she hasn’t learned how to pronounce the names of the cities in Phoenix, this has nothing to do with race, accent or being “authentic,” it has everything to do with an inexperienced anchor placing blame & not taking accountability or being a professional victim; a point Ruiz made herself on film just earlier this summer with the English pronunciation for Los Angeles. And it’s quite possible she’s being manipulated by executives, who in an unethical trend, will often demand but never in writing suggest exaggerated rolling of R’s for example, to try and attract more Spanish-speaking viewers.  This is done for one reason and one reason only: station profits.   I think everyone should be authentic but the problem is does Ruiz know what that means or, more importantly, sounds like now? It’s also interesting that Ruiz didn’t like when the alleged* negative truth she’d rather remain hidden was exposed regarding her desire have Tegna’s NBC 12 News send her to the 2016 Olympics in Rio because she speaks the language, except she doesn’t. They speak Portuguese in Brazil NOT Spanish.  When Ruiz was forced accountable with the facts she chose to #Twitterblock.  It appears placing blame, not taking accountability and manipulating the facts while not recognizing the rights of others may be a trend at Tegna’s NBC 12 News.

This may represent the other workplace abusive behavior: Selective Tolerance B or defending one set of rights while exploiting another’s as it relates to minorities.

It certainly would be unethical if the Tegna NBC 12 News executives decided to manipulate race issues in the Phoenix market just to grab more market share from Spanish viewers.  Fact-based evidence over time indicates unethical and possibly illegal behavior on the part of the executives who mishandled the anchor replacement; and, it’s clear to me that Ruiz is a pawn in a much larger game and all the more reason for me to #FollowFay over to ABC 15.  It’s up to each person reading this to read and apply the facts to help make the best decisions for yourself and or your family. The greater harm, as an employee who’s lived through this (in a different industry), is that this Case Study isn’t unique, it’s textbook.  The Sociopathic Business Model™ is a diagnostic tool to help employees identify the pathologically entrenched patterns of workplace abuse with the goal of creating positive change.  However, the lies we tell ourselves are always far worse than any ever told to us; and, if employees (past or present) blame each other the corrupt business model and the executives who use threats, fear and intimidation as means to control the negative truth, win at the expense of everyone else: employees, viewers, and advertisers. Under this model all employee accomplices eventually become employee victims regardless of industry; and, today it may be defending a former co-worker but tomorrow it will be fighting just as hard for one of your reading this now and it’s a matter of when not if. *thank you to readers who have provided more information that demonstrates more inconsistent & contradictory* language to action for a come complete Case Study.

Disclosure:  This story is written, like many others on this site, as a live Case Study to show patterns in workplace abuse/exposing unethical and or illegal behavior which is often a tactic used in The Sociopathic Business Model™ by companies who want to prevent their own negative truth from being exposed at the expense of patients, consumers, viewers, employees & taxpayers.  The points made are my own and not of anyone named in the story or NBC,  12 News Phoenix, AZ a Tegna Company.

UPDATED March 8, 2016:

November 14, 2014

Sandra Kotzambasis was the senior executive producer and promoted to news director of Phoenix NBC affiliate KPNX in November 2014.

“Sandra has earned this opportunity by demonstrating passion, flexibility, and the commitment to excellence that’s critical to the continued transformation of 12 News to serve our now and future audiences,” former News Director Mark Casey, who was promoted to VP & station manager, wrote in an email sent to staffers. “For the past three years, she’s been my partner as we’ve worked to both build our newscast ratings and develop the digital and social products that our customers expect. TV Spy

• Stunning. Congrats! I sure hope she has changed and learned from her earlier years in PHX. She acted as a vindictive, jealous, little child with no sense of how to manage people. Of course, that was the style of management required at the station at the time and still is. Maybe she has learned and has been humbled since that job. Only Time will tell.

Here’s hoping someone finally hits the “learn’ button. ftvlive.com

@12News why did your graphics call Vanessa Ruiz—Vanessa Ramirez?

— Janine Kerr (@JanineKerr1) March 8, 2016

Wow, that mix-up ought to allow #ProfessionalVictim Vanessa Ruiz to cry racism about her employer this time. Too bad  Sandra Kotzambasis TEGNA NBC 12 News KPNX News Director announced to staff today she’s leaving and tearfully packed up her office, or else she could have helped Ruiz spin another false racism story.    It’s never good to see job loss; but, it was easily predicted by The Sociopathic Business Model™, as all employee accomplices eventually become employee victims especially when the station was focused on image over substance. False #RacismForRatings didn’t pan out for the station in the numbers game; and, the countdown to Misner’s demise? Well, pretty sure that’s already begun. And judging from the comments from the TV Spy, TEGNA, NBC, 12 News has a serious management problem, but readers here already suspected as much.

Any bets on who’s next??

The blame game should get interesting…

Mark Casey is a tyrant and runs all of the good employees away. They’ve been partners in crime for 3 years and rule the newsroom through fear and intimidation. The GM is too busy being a socialite to see through Casey’s BS. That’s probably why they’ve fallen from #1 to dead last. No one in their right mind would work under Kotzambasis as #2.

Hillary Clinton staffer Mandy Grunwald asked “why does nobody ever go to jail?” while campaign manger Robby Mook lamented about the lack of transparency in the campaign; and, former CEO of the Clinton Foundation, Eric Braverman via Wikileaks gave them both the solution they were looking for.  Careful what you wish for Clinton Campaign.

Let’s answer Mandy Grunwald’s question: Why Does Nobody Ever Go To Jail?

I suspect she won’t like the answer:

whydoesnobodyevergotojailhillaryclinton PDF with hyperlinks

whydoesnobodyevergotojailhillaryclinton PDF with hyperlinks