<story><title>FedEx Accused of Largest Odometer Rollback Fraud in History with Used Vans</title><url>https://www.thedrive.com/news/fedex-accused-of-largest-odometer-rollback-fraud-in-history-with-used-vans</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crhulls</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d encourage a bit more skepticism to this article. While this accusation could possibly be true, there are two things to keep in mind, which I am sharing having experience as a founder&amp;#x2F;CEO who has gone from startup to IPO:&lt;p&gt;1) This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit. Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls whereby they can spin almost any story they want. And journalists go for clicks, so they amplify the sensationalism. It doesn&amp;#x27;t mean this is one of those, but a class action complaint should not just blindly be trusted.&lt;p&gt;2) There is a strong theme of &amp;quot;of course execs lie cheat steal at every turn&amp;quot; and I also think this narrative should be questioned. Ethics aside, the level of compliance in a public company is insanely high. Execs are already rich. To risk jailtime, which fraud can lead to, you&amp;#x27;d need to see something more existential than slightly increasing margins on used van sales.&lt;p&gt;I felt inclined to comment as I&amp;#x27;ve been on the other end of articles like this, and it is astounding the level of mind reading people have done into my intent and actions on things that were factually just not true at all. I also truly would find it very difficult to commit a broad organizational fraud even if I wanted to and my company is only 500 people.&lt;p&gt;If I had to make a prediction, the case is less black and white than it appears, and if there was fraud, it was probably committed at a non-executive level by the person whose P&amp;amp;L was directly tied to these resales. Or, it was done independently by the much smaller leasing company where this was more existential to them. It is highly unlikely to be a Fed Ex executive-level conspiracy.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure there are a few counter examples, such as say the VW emissions scandal, but I would counter these were the exceptions that proved the rule and in general when the C-level was involved was much higher stakes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>johndhi</author><text>Helpful perspective. As a lawyer who has worked on both sides of class actions, I generally classify these cases in four categories:&lt;p&gt;-Legit cases that describe (or at least ultimately lead to finding) clear and meaningful wrongdoing. There&amp;#x27;s always some room for arguing one way or the other but ultimately there&amp;#x27;s some clarity that something meaningfully wrong happened. I think these are probably ~3-5 percent of cases filed. These cases tend to settle relatively early for high dollar figures.&lt;p&gt;-Cases of clear but unimportant wrongdoing. Technically a statute was violated, but no one was really hurt at all. These tend to settle for small $ figures. Perhaps 20% of cases.&lt;p&gt;-Important but unclear wrongdoing (evidence supports either finding; among one million documents, some look really bad, while others look very exculpatory). These stick around for a long time and ultimately earn lawyers a lot but cost the parties, on average, a lot of money to litigate.  Perhaps 30% of cases.&lt;p&gt;-Complete&amp;#x2F;fabricated nonsense and&amp;#x2F;or fishing expeditions. Cost defendants a fair amount (and brutal for small defendants), but not the end of the world for big defendants. Perhaps 50% of cases.</text></comment>
<story><title>FedEx Accused of Largest Odometer Rollback Fraud in History with Used Vans</title><url>https://www.thedrive.com/news/fedex-accused-of-largest-odometer-rollback-fraud-in-history-with-used-vans</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crhulls</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d encourage a bit more skepticism to this article. While this accusation could possibly be true, there are two things to keep in mind, which I am sharing having experience as a founder&amp;#x2F;CEO who has gone from startup to IPO:&lt;p&gt;1) This is taken from a complaint in a class action lawsuit. Class action lawyers are very similar to patent trolls whereby they can spin almost any story they want. And journalists go for clicks, so they amplify the sensationalism. It doesn&amp;#x27;t mean this is one of those, but a class action complaint should not just blindly be trusted.&lt;p&gt;2) There is a strong theme of &amp;quot;of course execs lie cheat steal at every turn&amp;quot; and I also think this narrative should be questioned. Ethics aside, the level of compliance in a public company is insanely high. Execs are already rich. To risk jailtime, which fraud can lead to, you&amp;#x27;d need to see something more existential than slightly increasing margins on used van sales.&lt;p&gt;I felt inclined to comment as I&amp;#x27;ve been on the other end of articles like this, and it is astounding the level of mind reading people have done into my intent and actions on things that were factually just not true at all. I also truly would find it very difficult to commit a broad organizational fraud even if I wanted to and my company is only 500 people.&lt;p&gt;If I had to make a prediction, the case is less black and white than it appears, and if there was fraud, it was probably committed at a non-executive level by the person whose P&amp;amp;L was directly tied to these resales. Or, it was done independently by the much smaller leasing company where this was more existential to them. It is highly unlikely to be a Fed Ex executive-level conspiracy.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure there are a few counter examples, such as say the VW emissions scandal, but I would counter these were the exceptions that proved the rule and in general when the C-level was involved was much higher stakes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>burkaman</author><text>&amp;gt; Execs are already rich. To risk jailtime, which fraud can lead to, you&amp;#x27;d need to see something more existential than slightly increasing margins on used van sales.&lt;p&gt;This seems incredibly naive. You&amp;#x27;d have to be willfully ignorant to think that a) rich people won&amp;#x27;t break the law to make a tiny bit more money, and b) fraud committed by large corporations often results in jail time.&lt;p&gt;I agree with you that this article isn&amp;#x27;t worth very much, but that&amp;#x27;s only because lawsuits in general shouldn&amp;#x27;t be trusted without corroborating evidence, not because a rich executive would never do this.</text></comment>