When Markets Sour, Stuff Suddenly Oozes from the Woodwork ("The bezzle shrinks": LendingClub, Theranos, Breitling Energy)

``LendingClub, the largest of the marketplace lenders, disclosed today that founder and former CEO Renaud Laplanche and his family had taken out 32 loans from LendingClub in order to inflate the company's loan volumes -- a key metric by which investors determine the company's value -- "in periods after December 2009," a crucial moment: just before April 2010, when the company raised $24.5 million from investors including Foundation Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Canaan Partners.... The disclosure... battered not only the company but the entire industry, which is already reeling from rising loan defaults and investors that are now shying away from buying these loans...''