San Francisco, California - Sushovan Hussain, the former Chief Financial Officer of Autonomy Corporation plc, was sentenced to sixty (60) months in prison following his convictions after trial for one count of conspiracy, fourteen counts of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud by a federal jury, announced United States Attorney David L. Anderson and Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge John F. Bennett. The sentence was imposed by the Honorable Charles R. Breyer, U.S. District Judge.
In addition to the prison term, the Court ordered a fine in the amount of $4 million, the forfeiture of assets in the amount of $6.1 million, a three year term of supervised release and a special assessment of $1,600. Hussain was ordered to surrender to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons on June 15, 2019.
In 2011, Hewlett-Packard Company acquired Autonomy, the former software technology company dual headquartered in the United Kingdom and San Francisco, for about $11.7 billion. The evidence at trial demonstrated that for more than two years prior to the sale, Hussain, 55, a citizen and resident of the United Kingdom, used sophisticated accounting methods to falsely inflate Autonomy’s revenues to make it appear Autonomy was growing when it really was not. Specifically, Hussain used backdated contracts, roundtrips, channel stuffing, and other forms of accounting fraud to fraudulently inflate Autonomy’s publicly-reported revenues by as much as 14.6% in 2009, 17.9% in 2010, 21.5% in the first quarter of 2011, and 12.4% in the second quarter of 2011. In addition, Hussain, and his co-conspirators, fraudulently concealed from investors and market analysts the scale of Autonomy’s hardware sales, which were used to boost the company’s reported revenue. The evidence demonstrated Automony’s sales were inflated by $53.3 million in 2009, $99.08 million in 2010, $20.09 million in the first quarter of 2011 and $20.85 million in the second quarter of 2011.
On November 10, 2016, a federal grand jury indicted Hussain charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1349, and 14 counts of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343. On May 4, 2017, the grand jury superseded the indictment adding one count of securities fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1348.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert S. Leach, Adam A. Reeves, and William Frentzen prosecuted the case with the assistance of Elizabeth Margen, Phillip Villanueva, and Bridget Kilkenny. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the FBI and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
