Bethany McLean

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391 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 2 Aug

Bethany McLean’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Part 1: How to Spot a Corporate Fraud Before It Makes the Headlines · 26 Jul 2026 podcast

And what I mean by that, I have this way of thinking that I used to think that a fraud and a visionary were two different things, that the fraudster sat on this end of the spectrum and the visionary sat on the other end of the spectrum and they were not the same person.

And I started to realize over my career that they are actually where the ends of the circle meet.

The fraudster could be the visionary and the visionary could be the fraudster.

But for a few quirks that make all the difference, I mean, if you think about them, they have some of the same characteristics.

hype, a massive ability to get people to believe in whatever they're saying, an ability to believe in themselves, to persevere through the doubters and the people who say it can never be so to say, but it will be so.

But those are the very same characteristics that can get the visionary into trouble.

And I've joked that sometimes I think the only thing that separates them is that the visionary gets lucky through that period of time when he or she still needs access to capital and is able to keep raising money to sort of paper over the mistakes and overstatements and grand promises and to get to the other side.

Whereas the fraudster is one who gets caught in the middle and can't raise capital right when he or she most needs it.

And then the lies are exposed and it becomes known as this gigantic fraud because because the lies were exposed.

I'm not sure Elizabeth Holmes is totally an accurate figure through which to see this because there's a debate about whether her technology ever would have worked.

But for sure, she believed I think she believed it would.

And so if she had gotten to the other side, then would it matter that there had been lies in the run-up to it, projections to investors that weren't entirely true, lies about how well the technology worked?

No, everyone would remember her as a visionary because she made it to the other side.

So I think it's really, really difficult to tell the difference between the two figures until the old saying, hindsight is 20-20.

But again, back to that key question, just pay attention to the capital needs.

If the company needs people to continue to believe because the company is dependent on the markets in order to or on continued fundraising from investors, that's a risk factor.

I don't think so.

I think Elon Musk is a perfect example of how difficult it is to tell the difference.

There have been skeptics about Musk, obviously, since the get-go.

And they have, by the way, been right about a lot of things.

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