It was around 2007 when Joel Scott, then general counsel of the U.K.-based tech company Autonomy’s U.S. division, started to get concerned about some of the business tactics being pushed by his employers.
There were fishy transactions. For example, Autonomy held itself out as an enterprise software firm but had started covertly selling hardware. It also entered into transactions with resellers that didn’t quite make sense. Resellers would purchase the Autonomy’s software without paying for it fully or selling to an end user, but Autonomy would record the deal as revenue.