Fraud trial co-defendant of Mike Lynch killed in car accident days before tech magnate goes missing in sunken yacht
Mike Lynch’s co-defendant in recent US fraud trial, Stephen Chamberlain, was “fatally struck” by a car days before yacht Lynch was on sinks off Sicily.
In a strange and macabre twist of fate, two defendants who were recently acquitted in a US criminal fraud trial have been involved in tragic events just days apart. A car accident over the weekend in the United Kingdom left Stephen Chamberlain critically injured according to his lawyer. His co-defendant, Mike Lynch, is missing after the superyacht that he was on sank in a freak storm off the coast of Sicily.
Fraud trial co-defendant of Mike Lynch killed in car accident days before tech magnate goes missing in sunken yacht
A vehicle “fatally struck” Chamberlain while he was jogging in Cambridgeshire on Saturday morning. He was taken to hospital where Chamberlain was placed on life support but his lawyer said on Monday that he had passed away.
Gary Lincenberg said in a statement that his client “was a courageous man with unparalleled integrity, and we deeply miss him. He fought successfully to clear his good name, which lives on through his wonderful family.”
Chamberlain was the former vice president of finance for Autonomy and defendant in a recent US criminal fraud trial along with Lynch, CEO and co-founder of the British software firm. Both men were acquitted on all 15 charges by a San Francisco jury in June. They had been accused of scheming to inflate the value of Autonomy prior to its sale to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for $11 billion.
The company’s CFO, Sushovan Hussain, was found guilty in 2018 on 14 counts of wire fraud and one of securities fraud. His conviction and five-year prison sentence were upheld by a US appeals court in 2020.
Lynch, considered Britain’s Bill Gates, is one of six people for which Italian authorities are conducting a search and rescue mission off the coast of a seaside town near Palermo. Also missing are his 18-year-old daughter and the US lawyer who defended him in the US fraud trial, Chris Morvillo. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was rescued along with fourteen others. However, there has been one fatality reported, said to be the ship’s chef.
He and the 21 others were aboard a luxury yacht that sank while moored roughly half a mile from Porticello, Sicily during a violent storm early Monday morning. While both events happened just days apart, there is no evidence that there is any connection between the two.