A federal jury convicted three former executives of the once-highflying startup Outcome Health on several charges that they ran a billion-dollar scheme that defrauded customers including major pharmaceutical companies such as Novo Nordisk A/S as well as investors including
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The verdict caps the fall of an executive team led by
Rishi Shah,
who was close to Illinois Gov.
J.B. Pritzker
and a budding star in Democratic circles before fraud was revealed in a Wall Street Journal article in 2017. Chicago’s then-Mayor
Rahm Emanuel
declared at a company press conference “as Outcome goes, so goes Chicago.”
Mr. Shah, Outcome’s former chief executive and co-founder, along with former President
Shradha Agarwal
and former Chief Financial Officer
Brad Purdy
didn’t testify during the weekslong trial.
Their defense team argued that a former executive who pleaded guilty to fraud, and who was the government’s star witness at trial, was responsible for the criminal conduct at the company. Two other employees who reported to that executive,
Ashik Desai,
each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Mr. Desai struck a deal with the government for a reduced sentence in exchange for testifying against his former bosses.
Mr. Shah had been charged with 22 criminal counts including wire, mail and bank fraud while Ms. Agarwal and Mr. Purdy faced 17 and 15 counts, respectively. The defendants could face years in prison as a result of the convictions. It is likely that they will appeal the verdict.
Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the three former executives and Mr. Desai with fraud and has obtained a partial consent judgment against Mr. Desai in that case, which is pending. Outcome itself admitted that its former executives and employees defrauded clients and agreed to pay them $70 million as part of a 2019 deal to resolve federal fraud charges.
Outcome operated a business installing video screens in doctors’ offices and charging pharmaceutical companies to run drug ads on the devices, which were targeted at patients sitting in the waiting room.
Such advertising wasn’t a new business, but Outcome’s fast growth attracted a roughly $500 million equity investment in May 2017 at a $5.5 billion valuation from investors including Goldman, Google parent
Alphabet Inc.,
Pritzker Group Venture Capital and the investment firm of
Laurene Powell Jobs.
Unlike most startup investments, a large amount was earmarked as a dividend for Mr. Shah and Ms. Agarwal: $225 million.
Investors sued the company after the Journal revealed the fraud and the case was settled when Mr. Shah and Ms. Agarwal agreed to leave their executive roles and give back $159 million of the money they received from the investment.
Former Outcome Health President Shradha Agarwal arriving at court in Chicago in January.
Photo:
Antonio Perez/Zuma Press
The company had also raised nearly $500 million in loans, $38 million of which went to Mr. Shah and Ms. Agarwal, according to a pretrial filing from prosecutors.
The government had alleged that Messrs. Shah and Purdy and Ms. Agarwal participated in a joint criminal venture to charge pharmaceutical company clients for running ads on more screens than Outcome had installed in medical offices and to conceal from clients, auditors, lenders and investors the extent to which they didn’t deliver the promised ad space. It also alleged that the company manipulated third-party reports to inflate the effectiveness of its advertising.
Following the widely publicized prosecution of Theranos Inc. founder
Elizabeth Holmes,
the Outcome Health trial was another example of the government taking on what prosecutors in the trial called the technology world’s “fake-it-till-you-make-it” culture.
“It was a company built on a lie,” said prosecutor
William Johnston
during the government’s closing arguments. The government made the case to the jury that fraud at Outcome predated Mr. Desai’s arrival at the company.
In video interviews posted online, Mr. Shah and Ms. Agarwal had described how they bootstrapped their business, negotiating upfront payments from advertisers to generate the cash necessary to install the screens where ads would run.
In one 2016 interview, Mr. Shah described the strategy as bringing “from the future what we need to fuel the future in the present, which is a concept we’ve recycled.”
The risk of that strategy, which Mr. Shah described in both a 2012 and 2016 interview, was that Outcome needed to execute with military precision. “It required you to sell an idea to both” doctors and advertisers, he said in 2016, “and then you couldn’t mistime it, because you know, that would be fraud, right? If you sell something that doesn’t exist.”
Write to Rolfe Winkler at Rolfe.Winkler@wsj.com, John Keilman at john.keilman@wsj.com and Patrick Thomas at patrick.thomas@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
A federal jury convicted three former executives of the once-highflying startup Outcome Health on several charges that they ran a billion-dollar scheme that defrauded customers including major pharmaceutical companies such as Novo Nordisk A/S as well as investors including
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The verdict caps the fall of an executive team led by
Rishi Shah,
who was close to Illinois Gov.
J.B. Pritzker
and a budding star in Democratic circles before fraud was revealed in a Wall Street Journal article in 2017. Chicago’s then-Mayor
Rahm Emanuel
declared at a company press conference “as Outcome goes, so goes Chicago.”
Mr. Shah, Outcome’s former chief executive and co-founder, along with former President
Shradha Agarwal
and former Chief Financial Officer
Brad Purdy
didn’t testify during the weekslong trial.
Their defense team argued that a former executive who pleaded guilty to fraud, and who was the government’s star witness at trial, was responsible for the criminal conduct at the company. Two other employees who reported to that executive,
Ashik Desai,
each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Mr. Desai struck a deal with the government for a reduced sentence in exchange for testifying against his former bosses.
Mr. Shah had been charged with 22 criminal counts including wire, mail and bank fraud while Ms. Agarwal and Mr. Purdy faced 17 and 15 counts, respectively. The defendants could face years in prison as a result of the convictions. It is likely that they will appeal the verdict.
Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the three former executives and Mr. Desai with fraud and has obtained a partial consent judgment against Mr. Desai in that case, which is pending. Outcome itself admitted that its former executives and employees defrauded clients and agreed to pay them $70 million as part of a 2019 deal to resolve federal fraud charges.
Outcome operated a business installing video screens in doctors’ offices and charging pharmaceutical companies to run drug ads on the devices, which were targeted at patients sitting in the waiting room.
Such advertising wasn’t a new business, but Outcome’s fast growth attracted a roughly $500 million equity investment in May 2017 at a $5.5 billion valuation from investors including Goldman, Google parent
Alphabet Inc.,
Pritzker Group Venture Capital and the investment firm of
Laurene Powell Jobs.
Unlike most startup investments, a large amount was earmarked as a dividend for Mr. Shah and Ms. Agarwal: $225 million.
Investors sued the company after the Journal revealed the fraud and the case was settled when Mr. Shah and Ms. Agarwal agreed to leave their executive roles and give back $159 million of the money they received from the investment.
Former Outcome Health President Shradha Agarwal arriving at court in Chicago in January.
Photo:
Antonio Perez/Zuma Press
The company had also raised nearly $500 million in loans, $38 million of which went to Mr. Shah and Ms. Agarwal, according to a pretrial filing from prosecutors.
The government had alleged that Messrs. Shah and Purdy and Ms. Agarwal participated in a joint criminal venture to charge pharmaceutical company clients for running ads on more screens than Outcome had installed in medical offices and to conceal from clients, auditors, lenders and investors the extent to which they didn’t deliver the promised ad space. It also alleged that the company manipulated third-party reports to inflate the effectiveness of its advertising.
Following the widely publicized prosecution of Theranos Inc. founder
Elizabeth Holmes,
the Outcome Health trial was another example of the government taking on what prosecutors in the trial called the technology world’s “fake-it-till-you-make-it” culture.
“It was a company built on a lie,” said prosecutor
William Johnston
during the government’s closing arguments. The government made the case to the jury that fraud at Outcome predated Mr. Desai’s arrival at the company.
In video interviews posted online, Mr. Shah and Ms. Agarwal had described how they bootstrapped their business, negotiating upfront payments from advertisers to generate the cash necessary to install the screens where ads would run.
In one 2016 interview, Mr. Shah described the strategy as bringing “from the future what we need to fuel the future in the present, which is a concept we’ve recycled.”
The risk of that strategy, which Mr. Shah described in both a 2012 and 2016 interview, was that Outcome needed to execute with military precision. “It required you to sell an idea to both” doctors and advertisers, he said in 2016, “and then you couldn’t mistime it, because you know, that would be fraud, right? If you sell something that doesn’t exist.”
Write to Rolfe Winkler at Rolfe.Winkler@wsj.com, John Keilman at john.keilman@wsj.com and Patrick Thomas at patrick.thomas@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8