Juicero was an overpriced juicer. The people who bought it still got the machine and the juice - albeit DRM juice that could be squeezed by hand. There is zero fraud, just an overhyped product.
Theranos made fraudulent claims about their product, pressured themselves into the health care market, and violated hundreds of ethical guidelines. Not only were investors defrauded (oh well, its only money) - people used them in clinical scenarios and impacted actual healthcare patients. When people questioned these claims, the CEO publicly claimed criticism of her was sexist, and the media was complicit.
Sure Juicero was a fraud. The founder claimed (to the public, investors, employees, board members) that the pulp had to be cold pressed with thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch, so they developed a juicer to do that. Except it turned out you could "juice" the packets with your bare hands, and the results would not be that different. Why did he do that? Because if all users needed was a $20 manual roller press to juice the packets, there would be no specialized "DRM" juicer device, and no business model.
Yeah. I don't think it was as big a fraud as Theranos. But the amount of money spent, the level of self-promotion, the utter uselessness of their solution, and the suddenness of the collapse all make me think that they at best acted with utter disregard for the sort of concerns that keep sane entrepreneurs up at night. Did the CEO know it was a fraud? Hard to say. But that's not a question we ask of other frauds like anti-vaxxers, spirit mediums, and snake oil salesmen. Since we can't crack open people's minds and look, for me a standard of "knows or should have known" is generally good enough for me to call something a fraud.
It's not of the same magnitude of Theranos to be sure. And there is no consumer fraud now as they offered to fully refund all the juicers. I think the investors have a significant fraud claim against senior management who solicited them but:
a) Juicero is broke, and "piercing the corporate veil" is difficult and expensive.
b) It would show exactly how credulous the investors were, as well as their outstanding lack of initial and ongoing due diligence and oversight.
Definitely. I think B is why we don't see many fraud cases brought here. I doubt Theranos would have been exposed like this if they weren't working in a regulated space. Although doing big fraudulent deals with Walgreens and Safeway didn't help; as non-investors and publicly traded companies, they had less reason to just slink away quietly.
Theranos made fraudulent claims about their product, pressured themselves into the health care market, and violated hundreds of ethical guidelines. Not only were investors defrauded (oh well, its only money) - people used them in clinical scenarios and impacted actual healthcare patients. When people questioned these claims, the CEO publicly claimed criticism of her was sexist, and the media was complicit.
These two scenarios are vastly different.