it guaranteed 75% of a bank loan to the company. Investors and taxpayers alike were hit hard when the company went bankrupt. While Pol Hauspie pleaded guilty, Jo Lernout denied any wrongdoing, claiming that the company has been a victim of a "CIA conspiracy". On September 20, 2010, co-founders Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie, as well as Nico Willaert, former vice chairman, and Gaston Bastiaens, former chief executive officer, were each sentenced to five years prison (of which three years effective and two years probationary) for fraud by the Ghent Court of Appeals. In September 2012 Jo Lernout began a one-year sentence of house arrest with an electronic ankle bracelet. Technology After the bankruptcy, Nuance Communications (known then as ScanSoft) acquired all of the speech technologies. The revenues of the company grew sharply from $17.1 million in third quarter of 2001, to $216 million in Q3 2008. Vantage Learning acquired all of the proofing, spelling, and linguistic search technologies. "Lernout & Hauspie Michelle" and "Lernout & Hauspie Michael" are text-to-speech voices created by L&H and included in Microsoft Office 2003. L&H speech recognition was used in the "Speech" option in the control panel of Microsoft Windows XP abbreviated as LH. In addition, Microsoft Office uses certain elements of a grammar checker previously owned by L&H, which is mentioned in the About window. See also Recipient of the 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in Economics "for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world" Dragon NaturallySpeaking Speech synthesis References External links One of Lernout & Hauspie's old websites, archived on the Internet Archives. "How High-Tech Dream Shattered in Scandal at Lernout & Hauspie", an article from the WSJ (December 7, 2000) (last cached on Apr 20 2006 in Internet Archives) "Goldman Sachs and the $580 Million Black Hole", New York Times, July 14, 2012 Software companies established in 1987 Software companies disestablished in 2001 Companies based in West Flanders Defunct software companies of Belgium Scandals in Belgium History of Ypres