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.
