back to article You're toxic, I'm slippin' under: SCL, Cambridge Analytica file for US bankruptcy

The US branches of Cambridge Analytica and its parent firm SCL have filed for bankruptcy as execs inch closer to ridding themselves of the toxic brand. The filings, submitted to the New York Southern Bankruptcy Court late yesterday, are for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy – akin to liquidation in the UK – which allows the debtor to …

  1. DJV Silver badge

    "Alexander Nix, appearing to offer up honey-traps, bribes and more to reporters"

    Once a devious crook, always a devious crook.

    I hope they find a way of locking all the Cambridge Analytica directors up...

  2. Hollerithevo

    Poor Cambridge University

    Or indeed any company called 'Cambridge'. Tainted now.

    1. DNTP

      Re: Poor Cambridge University

      My company is in Cambridge (MA) right now. Everything is chaos because of this taint by association. Companies left and right are going out of business. Rioters are in the streets attacking innocents with keyboards and throwing UPS batteries at cars. Cats and dogs are living together. The government has completely shut down all utilities. Finland is not a country. All lines of communication and transit to the rest of the world are being cut off as we speak. Teams of blackops agents are tracking Wi-Fi signals and arresting all remaining

      1. Alistair

        Re: Poor Cambridge University

        @DNTP

        You should see what the moose are up to in This Cambridge.

        1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

          Re: Poor Cambridge University

          Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretti nasti!

    2. elDog

      Re: Poor Cambridge University

      Easy. Just rename yourselves as Oxford Philosophics.

      There are a few other upper-crust names laying/lying about. Snarf up the domains and IP quickly. After all the smokes and the mirrors can soon be elsewhere.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Poor Cambridge University

        > Easy. Just rename yourselves as Oxford Philosophics.

        Then everyone will assume that you work, have worked or will work for MI6¹.

        ¹ Before eventually defecting.

  3. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    So they...

    So they start up a load of company shells, rack up a shed load of debts, and then want to run away without any intention of paying them off when their dodgy dealings are exposed?

    These wankers should be hauled over the coals immediately.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Childcatcher

      Re: So they...

      I'd just put the whole BOD in the stocks in Trafalgar Square for a month and let the public show their contempt for what they did. Far better (And a lot cheaper) than putting them in chokey unless it is a 12th Century rat infested, cockroach ridden, stinking dungeon.

      1. cd

        Re: So they...

        They need to be sentenced to total lack of privacy for the rest of their lives, with no location free of cameras and mics allowed. Surely someone has invented the penis cam by now.

        1. onefang
          Gimp

          Re: So they...

          "Surely someone has invented the penis cam by now."

          I believe there is various Internet of Kinky Things available, with all manner of connectivity. One of them probably has a camera. Many have remote controls. Think I'd rather power up the electrodes than look through that camera though. And don't call me Surely.

    2. Mark 85

      Re: So they...

      It's a pity sometimes, that company directors, etc. (the brass in charge) can't be personally accountable for the company's debts. They grab as much cash as they can bleeding off the money and leave the creditors to eat the loss. Then they turn right around and start a new company based on the old one's business plan. Meh...

      1. Tom 35

        Re: So they...

        "Then they turn right around and start a new company based on the old one's business plan."

        And the same staff, and the assets the old company sold to the new company (for $1 and consulting fees).

        They have moved across the street and have a new name.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So they...

        > It's a pity sometimes, that company directors, etc. (the brass in charge) can't be personally accountable for the company's debts.

        Which country do you leave in? What makes you think that's not the case?

      3. granfalloon

        Re: So they...

        Directors can be held personally liable for a Company's debts under Section 214 of the Insolvency Act - regrettably 'wrongful trading' is difficult to prove and most of them get away with it.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So they...

      Exactly what's the chapter for "fraudulent bankruptcy"?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: So they...

        > Exactly what's the chapter for "fraudulent bankruptcy"?

        Why fraudulent? It is pretty obvious their train is not going anywhere so it makes sense to wind it up as soon as you see insurmountable trouble ahead. It may actually be the only sensible decision they ever took.

  4. JohnFen

    The sleaziest excuse

    "complaining that it had been "vilified" for legal and commonplace online marketing activities."

    Ignoring the apparent illegal activities that it was up to, this is perhaps the sleaziest excuse. It's essentially saying "but everyone else is doing it!"

    That something may be legal and commonplace does not indicate whether or not it's acceptable. It is appropriate to vilify CA for this stuff, and it is also appropriate to vilify every other company that engages in this stuff as well. In fact, lots of us do so, frequently.

    1. GIRZiM

      Re: The sleaziest excuse

      It is appropriate to vilify CA for this stuff

      There's a lot to vilify California for, it's true, but it's not all bad.

      1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: The sleaziest excuse

        .ca? "blame Canada!"

      2. J. Cook Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: The sleaziest excuse

        California?! I thought y'all meant Computer Associates! (the original CA, unless you count 'CA' meaning a Certificate Authority....)

        1. Stoneshop
          Devil

          Re: The sleaziest excuse

          California?! I thought y'all meant Computer Associates!

          Well, they too have a lot to answer for.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As toxic as they are they've actually done people a favour.

    Now people know what Facebook et al are doing and taking. They also know how election manipulation works and the more examples given means that more people might not fall for it next time.

    Actually on second thought people will still use Facebook and still fall for the rubbish. When are we getting interplanetary travel so we can go and fuck up another planet?

    1. Mark 85

      Actually on second thought people will still use Facebook and still fall for the rubbish.

      The answer seems to be "yes". I hear from friends that FB still has "quizzes" and the like and after taking the quizzes, suddenly the ads change and/or get worse in quantity. But hey.... FB is "free" and all the cool people use it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        > But hey.... FB is "free" and all the cool people use it.

        Eh? 2018 mate, not 2008. What cool people are you talking about?

    2. JohnFen

      "Now people know what Facebook et al are doing and taking."

      FB users will either ignore or forget this, just as they have all the prior times that Facebook has been caught abusing them.

      My sole goal at this point is to push toward preventing Facebook from abusing those of us who choose not to use Facebook. Facebook users are choosing their own fate, and I really believe that they should have the freedom to do that. But nobody should be able to drag me down with them.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "My sole goal at this point is to push toward preventing Facebook from abusing those of us who choose not to use Facebook"

        You and me both, but frustratingly I hear that Facebook creates something called 'shadow profiles' (which Zukerberg claims he hasn't heard of) for people that are related somehow to users but aren't users themselves. Who knows what personal attributes are stored in such profiles as they farm data from all the sources they have access to??

        So, you are a user of Facebook even if you aren't, just without any opt-outs or other privacy controls.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Stop

          Which leads to the obvious question: Should I become a FB user just to get those controls, and then simply never log in or submit anything? The answer is "no, what reason do I have to believe FB honors my 'preferences' and the controls control anything? probably all placebo switches anyway". FB is stupid, using it for anything is stupid, the people who got sucked in might not be stupid per se but they sure do act stupidly.

    3. onefang

      "When are we getting interplanetary travel so we can go and fuck up another planet?"

      So long as those of us that don't like fucking up planets can find yet another planet that wont get fucked up.

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Um, sorry but, if we're there, it'll get fucked up.

        We are a plague, a virus, and Mr Smith knows what to do with us.

        Educate. Educate, educate, educate.

        The only budget that has any true importance in any country is the Education budget. The USA gave that budget short shriff and now they have a mobster running the country. The American Empire is doomed and any country that does not make its schools a priority will see the same fate.

      2. 2Nick3

        "So long as those of us that don't like fucking up planets can find yet another planet that wont get fucked up."

        Just don't set up an Interstellar Internet Interface (the III is to the galaxy as WWW is to the Earth) so FB can't get to you and your data.

        Of course the latency involved would probably help - by the time FB learned your preferences they wouldn't be relevant to your distant descendants.

  6. EveryTime

    So a previously profitable company is suddenly insolvent and saddled with back-dated debts.

    The only assets left are the broken office chairs and a few printers that are out of toner.

    Nothing suspicious about that...

    My guess is that those previous insiders will even be able to write off the debts and claim tax credits for their paper losses.

    1. elDog

      So a previously profitable company is suddenly insolvent and saddled with back-dated debts.

      You've got it pegged. A name change on the stationary - shit there isn't even any of that anymore, is cheap. A new legal entity - onshore LLC or way-offshore - a couple of hundred quid/$s.

      This model of squiggling out of debts and responsibilities has been honed to a fine art by the current leader of the free world.

      Makes you wonder why any citizen of any country should pledge fealty (pay taxes) to their nation. Well, maybe in the non-democracies like the USSR where you'll just disappear. I hear there is some form of adulation between the US imPOTUS and the USSR tzar.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bankruptcy

    "It was set up by Julian Wheatland – the chairman of SCL Group, who signed the bankruptcy filing for Cambridge Analytica US – as the director"

    Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I thought the UK had rules which prevent someone involved in a bankruptcy from holding the position of director for a number of years afterward?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bankruptcy

      > Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I thought the UK had rules which prevent someone involved in a bankruptcy from holding the position of director for a number of years afterward?

      As far as I'm aware, the rules do not prevent you from being a shareholder though (but I may be wrong, anyone with recent experience please clarify).

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nix is Nixed

    Hardly! Anyone can see just how slippery this outfit is and the 'web-like nature of the businesses'. There won't be 200k chandelier celebrations this year, as they'll have to pay expensive Panama-Papers type law-firms to setup overseas in some shady 3rd-World Democratic-Republic-of-Neither.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What's the odds CA executives see themselves as actual heroes or good guys here

      In another era... You can see these upper-class elites in an English country club somewhere sipping brandy, after dispatching a crack team of 'data mercenaries' to a war-torn part of Africa...

      With the single goal of starting an illicit war to capture mining or oil interests for some shady firm back home. Modelling themselves on Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Anthony Hopkins reborn... Doing God's work, just like Goldman Sachs...

      1. Cpt Blue Bear

        Re: What's the odds CA executives see themselves as actual heroes or good guys here

        "Modelling themselves on Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Anthony Hopkins reborn..."

        I think you might be confusing Anthony Hopkins with Richard Harris. The former would surely have been to young for the main cast of Flight of the Wild Geese in 1978. From memory he is also still alive. IMDB makes no mention of it but does say that around the same time Hopkins played Yitzhak Rabin in something called Victory at Entebbe, along with a cast that could have been the headliners in The Wild Geese.

        It also says he was in A Bridge Too Far, but then looking down the cast list it seems every actor currently over 55 was too.

        Its also ironic given that the core of the Wild Geese story of a of an aging soldier of fortune trying to assuage the guilt of his past with one last operation and how it is all undone by his even more mercenary (pardon the pun) paymasters.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          'The former would surely have been to young'

          1925 / 1930 / 1937 - Burton / Harris / Hopkins. Not huge gap...

          Before I was thinking Wild-Geese meets this classic maybe:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut_(1974_film)

          1. Cpt Blue Bear

            Re: 'The former would surely have been to young'

            "1925 / 1930 / 1937 - Burton / Harris / Hopkins. Not huge gap..."

            You are quite right. I guess I think of Hopkins as younger because his career got a second wind in the late '80s by which time Burton was dead.

            Reading the Juggernaut plot summary rings bells for me. The cast is impressive including Bilbo Baggins and Roj Blake.

  9. sanmigueelbeer Silver badge
    Happy

    Easy. Just rename yourselves as Oxford Philosophics.

    Main company will be called WGN (short for We Gottcha Now) Analytics and Beverly Hills Bombshells for their honeytraps.

  10. Wellyboot Silver badge
    Holmes

    What Directorship Responsibilities???

    Wheatland & Tayler - can't be held accountable -

    >> statuses as "persons with significant control" were ceased at the end of February.<<

    They left the company as a going concern

    >>Shortly after, just as the furore hit, three others with no previous positions at Cambridge Analytica or its affiliates were named directors<<

    THESE directors are reponsible for the bankruptcy.

    All legal & above board.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: What Directorship Responsibilities???

      Legal, above board and completely immoral.

      Where are the Boondock Saints when you need them ?

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