Tech tycoon Mike Lynch, one of six people missing from a sunken yacht off Sicily, had been trying to move past a Silicon Valley debacle that had tarnished his legacy as an icon of British ingenuity.
Lynch, 59, struck gold when he sold Autonomy, a software maker he founded in 1996, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. But the deal quickly turned into an albatross for him after he was accused of cooking the books to make the sale.
The fraud allegations resulted in Lynch being fired by HP’s then-CEO Meg Whitman and a decade-long legal battle. It culminated with him being extradited from the U.K. to face criminal charges of engineering a massive fraud against a company that shaped Silicon Valley’s zeitgeist after starting in a Palo Alto, California, garage in 1939.
Lynch steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, asserting that he was being made a scapegoat for HP’s own bungling — a position he maintained while testifying before a jury during a 2 1/2 month trial in San Francisco earlier this year. U.S. Justice Department prosecutors called more than 30 witnesses in attempt to prove allegations that Lynch engaged in accounting duplicity that bilked billions of dollars from HP.
The trial ended up vindicating Lynch, who was cleared of all charges in June. Lynch, who had remained free on $100 million bail during the trial, had pledged to return to the U.K. and explore new ways to innovate.
Although he avoided a possible prison sentence, Lynch still faced a potentially huge bill stemming from a civil case in London that HP mostly won during 2022. Damages have not been determined in that case, but HP is seeking $4 billion. Lynch made more than $800 million from the Autonomy sale.
Before becoming entangled with HP, Lynch was widely hailed as a visionary who inspired descriptions casting him as the British version of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Lynch, a Cambridge-educated mathematician, made his mark running Autonomy, which made a search engine that could pore through emails and other internal business documents to help companies find vital information more quickly.
In the months leading up to the deal that would go awry, HP valued Autonomy at $46 billion, according to evidence presented at Lynch’s trial.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
