The 5 most suspicious things about tech billionaire Mike Lynch’s capsized yacht

On August 19, tech billionaire Mike Lynch died when his yacht capsized off the coast of Sicily after encountering a violent storm.

That same day, miles away in an English village near Cambridge, Stephen Chamberlain, Lynch’s business partner, was hit by a car while jogging and later died.

Lynch and Chamberlain were cleared of fraud charges in the same trial just a month earlier, stemming from the 2011 sale of Autonomy, Lynch’s machine learning data analysis company, to Hewlett-Packard.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding their deaths, combined with the sheer status of those on board the yacht, have sparked worldwide controversy and suspicion.

Taking a deeper dive into some of the popular points of intrigue, here are the most peculiar points about the curious story of Lynch’s death.

The unsinkable ship

The story almost writes itself: Like the Titanic, the unsinkable ship … sinks.

Lynch’s 56-meter luxury yacht, named Bayesian, was built by Italian company Perini Navi, a subsidiary of the Italian Sea Group.

The Italian Sea Group has declared the sailing ships to be “unsinkable bodies.”

'We didn’t see it coming.'

However, the claims of the group’s CEO, Giovanni Costantino, go much farther than that. Costantino went so far as to say that the incident “sounds like an unbelievable story, both technically and as a fact.”

"Being the manufacturer of Perini [boats], I know very well how the boats have always been designed and built," he continued, per Sky News. "And as Perini is a sailing ship ... sailing ships are renowned to be the safest ever."

This sounds exactly what a boat manufacturer would say about his product, but to sink that fast, most have surmised, including Costantino, the vessel likely would have had to have taken on water at an alarming rate in order to sink.

Bad weather or bad captain?

“The Bayesian was a model for many other vessels because of its stability and exceptionally high performance,” Costantino told the BBC. “There was absolutely no problem with it.”

That is, of course, unless something went horribly wrong.

Costantino’s remarks seemed to place the onus on the ship’s captain, James Cutfield of New Zealand.

The manufacturer said that before approaching the storm, the captain should have closed every opening, lifted anchor, turned on the engine, and pointed into the wind.

This would have stabilized the vessel, and the ship would have cruised through the storm in “comfort,” he added.

But Costantino said that there must have been a hatch or side entrance left open for water to have surged inside.

Spotlights have since been focused on Cutfield, who survived the ordeal along with his crew and certain passengers. While the six most notable passengers all died, survivors include Charlotte Golunski, a co-founder with Lynch of the venture capital firm Invoke Capital, funded by the proceeds from Autonomy’s sale, and Golunski’s 1-month-old daughter.

“We didn’t see it coming,” Cutfield told the media. It was an interesting statement, since others definitely saw the storm coming.

The storm in question was described by local authorities first as a waterspout, or mini-tornado, but later changed to a downburst, a weather phenomenon that includes powerful downdrafts during a thunderstorm. The downburst results in damaging winds that spread in every direction.

Costantino noted that there was another sailing vessel just 492 feet from the Bayesian that suffered no damage.

The Sir Robert Baden Powell, a Dutch ship built in 1957, somehow weathered the same storm that Lynch’s modern yacht couldn’t.

“A ship from those years cannot have the technology of the Bayesian,” Costantino said. “Yet that ship did not suffer damage. Its crew had prepared it well to face the storm. They even managed to provide assistance to the Bayesian.”

Costantino then pointed to local fishermen, implying that others were more cautious of the weather that day than Lynch’s crew was.

One of those fishermen, Matteo Cannia, told the BBC he saw flashes of lightning and heard thunder and wind and thus decided to go home.

Another fisherman, Fabio Cefalu, had also planned to go out that morning but decided against it due to the weather conditions. He actually went out to sea in a rescue attempt when the Bayesian shot up a flare.

While prosecutors said they believed one person was on watch in the Bayesian’s cockpit that night, a ship surveyor told the BBC that two crew members should have been taking turns on watch due to the storm warnings.

These mysterious events resulted in state prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio telling reporters that there were many possible culpabilities, but it could “just be the captain,” or it “could be the whole crew.”

The banker on board

Among the deceased was Morgan Stanley Chairman Jonathan Bloomer and his wife, Judith.

According to Sky News, the 70-year-old and his wife were on the boat to celebrate Lynch's aforementioned court victory.

The trial was regarding Lynch’s software company Autonomy, which was sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for $11 billion. Though it took less than a year for HP to write down over $8 billion of Autonomy’s value, fraud scandals from the sale took years to surface, culminating in Autonomy’s CFO Sushovan Hussain being found guilty of fraud in 2018.

Lynch and Chamberlain, Autonomy’s VP of finance, faced more than a dozen charges in the trial but were acquitted in the summer of 2024. Read more on Autonomy here.

Bloomer was a defense witness in that trial, the Independent wrote, adding that he was also the chairman of Autonomy’s audit committee during its sale to HP.

Lynch’s lawyer Christopher Morvillo and his wife, Neda, also died on the yacht.

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Chamberlain died the same day

In a shocking coincidence, Lynch’s colleague Chamberlain was struck by a car and hospitalized while jogging in Cambridgeshire, England.

The incident occurred around 10 a.m. the same day as the boating wreck, which happened just hours earlier.

The 52-year-old was running when he was hit by a Vauxhall Corsa driven by a 49-year-old woman, in an area where the speed limit is 60 miles per hour.

The coroner stated that a vehicle was “presented with a runner crossing the road” between two parts of a bridleway, the Telegraph reported. The car caused “significant injuries” to Chamberlain, who later died in hospital from a “traumatic head injury” after being placed on life support.

Police appealed for witnesses, but none came forward. The woman driving the car reportedly remained at the scene and was allegedly giving assistance to Chamberlain.

Chamberlain was also using a fitness app that tracked his movements. Police were able to pinpoint that he had been running for about six miles before he was hit and that his route was plotted out in advance.

Chamberlain was also reportedly still on “administrative leave” due to his trial from company Darktrace, of which he was the CEO.

Darktrace’s intelligence ties

After Autonomy’s controversial sale to HP, Lynch started a venture capital firm, Invoke Capital. His first big investment was in cyber intelligence firm Darktrace.

“Darktrace wasn’t just an investment; team members from Invoke Capital who have intelligence ties, along with other unnamed intelligence professionals, were heavily involved,” Return’s James Poulos said.

According to the Daily Mail, Chamberlain and other Darktrace executives had deep ties to both U.S. and U.K. intelligence.

'A combination of maths from Cambridge with the credibility of GCHQ and MI5 is unmatched.'

Co-founder Stephen Huxter was a senior member of MI5’s cyber defense team. Huxter also installed Andrew France as chief executive at Darktrace, a former U.K. Government Communications Headquarters operative.

Also, two high-ranking intelligence executives from opposite sides of the pond were reportedly on Darktrace’s board: ex-MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans and the NSA’s Jim Penrose, who rose to the rank of defense intelligence senior level.

Penrose was also Darktrace’s executive vice president of cyber intelligence.

Darktrace wasn’t exactly hiding these connections and even boasted of its intelligence ties in a 2015 Wired interview.

"A combination of maths from Cambridge with the credibility of GCHQ and MI5 is unmatched," said Nicole Eagan, who was the Darktrace CEO after France.

As questions arose about Darktrace, the company was eventually accused of manipulating sales numbers, misrepresenting revenue, and mismanaging expenses. The accusations mirrored those against Autonomy during its sale to HP.

Darktrace’s shares subsequently plunged by more than 17%.

Venture capital firm Quintessential Capital Management even issued a 70-page report that concluded with a statement about being "deeply skeptical" about the "validity of Darktrace's financial statements."

Darktrace replied by saying the company had "rigorous controls in place."

After years of up-and-down stock prices, Darktrace soared 24% thanks to its artificial intelligence-backed products. In April 2024, the cyber industry-focused private equity firm Thoma Bravo, which is the largest stockholder in the NASDAQ stock exchange, purchased the company for $5.3 billion, a deal that will go through notwithstanding the controversy and fallout surrounding the Lynch saga.

From the onset of his career, Lynch has been suspected of having ties to national security agencies. His first company, called Cambridge Neurodynamics, specialized in computer-based fingerprint recognition.

Lynch revealed to Wired in 2002 that he had done work with British intelligence through Cambridge Neurodynamics, stating that "they have the most interesting problems.”

Since Lynch's death, HP has decided to move forward with legal proceedings against his estate. As Reuters reported, HP has filed the lawsuit against Lynch and the aforementioned CFO Hussain.

HP is seeking more than $4 billion in damages.