It’s been more than a decade since British tech entrepreneur Michael Lynch sold his software company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion. Now he’s facing the risk of serious prison time.

The blockbuster deal has landed him in criminal court alongside his former vice president of finance, Stephen Chamberlain, with each facing more than a dozen counts of wire fraud and other charges. Prosecutors say that, through a string of conference calls, news releases and emails, they presented a rosy picture of Autonomy at a time it actually was tanking, duping HP into massively overpaying in the process.