Tier 1: Get caught. Go to jail.
Tier 2: Get caught. "Fix" the legal progress in your favor. Don't go to jail.
Tier 3: Bribe the people doing the enforcement. Don't get caught, because there is no one to catch you.
Tier 4: Bribe the people doing the law writing. Don't get caught, because you aren't doing anything "wrong" (technically speaking).
Tier 5: Buy out the mass media, so that no one thinks there is anything wrong about what you are doing any more. The clueless voter who lives from the juices of the media mogul is the tier 5 criminal's best friend.
IMO, most of the global financial system is somewhere between tier 4 and 5, with a bit of 3 (recruiting away the SEC regulators to big iBanks). Thankfully we still have a relatively free press in the US, so even if there is some lockdown there is a lot of ability to get alternative information.
Thankfully we have the ability to operate presses fairly freely, but these little presses don't seem to matter all that much when it comes to fending off the thieves. I'm not quite sure what the solution is, but I suspect it involves a large number of people working together to build a system that is better than the current one.
Stating these kind of absolute, unproven, personal statements as absolute facts is (was?) frowned upon around here.
Calm down.
You can read more here:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/did_ken_...
Maybe, just maybe, watching your life crumble and dealing with the guilt and shame of a conviction was a huge source of stress and caused a heart attack?
Nah, you're right, he's probably drinking Mojitos on a beach in South America and chuckling over all the suckers he fooled.
SEC and FTC violations are civil offenses. The punishment for civil offenses are fines. Plenty of firms and higher-ups have paid fines.
Jail time only applies in cases where deliberate fraud is proven to have occurred. We all know that the finance guys were too reckless in their pursuit of profits. But recklessness is not a crime (and indeed, the only crime in the U.S. system for which "recklessness" is relevant is manslaughter/murder).
Here's the ex-CEO of Countrywide getting his criminal investigation dropped after settling with the SEC for $67.5 million: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/criminal-investigatio...
I'm seeing a pattern here.
The article says he paid 67.5 million in fines to settle a securities fraud lawsuit brought by the SEC. It was a civil lawsuit, so the penalty if he lost (instead of settled) would have been a fine.
The criminal case was dropped because a grand jury would not indict after 2 years debating the issue.
The settlement has nothing to do with the criminal case.
And in the other case of the "low-level countrywide loan officer".. the level of fraud detailed in your link goes far and beyond the fraud occurring in the mortgage industry at the time. He had countrywide issue 38million in fraudulent loans, of which 8.7million went into his own bank account.
Perhaps this is a facet of law that people should lobby to get changed. The kind of wanton disregard shown by the finanical sector during the recent meltdown damn well should be a crime, if it isn't already.
I also submit it was reckless to provide mass government guarantee for subprime loans - after all, they are subprime for a reason, due to very high default risk, and when this risk materialized - and it had to materialize sometime unless whoever evaluated these loans as subprime was wildly mistaken - taxpayers were on the hook for these loans. Should people who supported FNM and FMA operations go to jail for that?
I'm afraid we'd end up jailing a real lot of people, including a lot of politicians, if we go this road. And if it would produce any negative consequences, we'd also have to jail whoever proposed such laws - as it would be deemed reckless to propose it...
There are plenty of other examples, but many of these people went well past recklessness into fraud. EX1: If you setup a deal, know it's terrible and bet your own money that it will fail while advising your clients to do the deal with their money then your committing fraud. EX2: If your training documents tell people to commit fraud then your directly culpable.
Risky investments guised as Safe should very well be illegal - it's fraud.
Recklessness changing the world: Charles Lindberg
But of course he didn't sell tickets to his first voyage
And sure, branding something it's barely valued more than the paper it's printed on is fraud.
I've been following foreclosure stories for a while. The DAs are willfully asleep - hundreds of thousands of perjuries have been committed and documented, tens of thousands have been confirmed by the perjuring entity (as in this case), but the legal system is not interested in pursuing justice. Read Deninger's "The Market Ticker" or ZeroHedge for (almost daily) specific details.
In other news, I amended my tax return a few years ago. I do not generally refer to that event as the time I committed perjury.
Foreclosures are different, and for a good reason. One of the statements you make (similarly to DMCA takedowns) is something along the lines of "I have done my due diligence, and I assert under risk of perjury that the info contained below is correct."
If your bad foreclosure (or DMCA takedown) is taken to court, you should be able to prove that a mistake happened in spite of your due diligence.
Unlike amended taxes, or patent infringement, the results of an unjustified foreclosure might be fatal and essentially irrecoverable for the foreclosed party.
> Also, it's rare to prosecute for perjury when the defendant volunteers the new version, as that would discourage past liars from ever coming forward with the truth.
No truth was volunteered willingly here. They are challenged in court every day, and often shown to be fraudulent! After a lot of these, they went back to revise.
It is rare to prosecute when someone corrects themselves with a good excuse.
It is not rare to prosecute when someone admits perjury with no good explanation (and really, you should look into it, e.g. on Deninger's market ticker - the only explanation here is greed, which is not good enough). Unless you are a big bank.
> In other news, I amended my tax return a few years ago. I do not generally refer to that event as the time I committed perjury.
Perjury requires, as you stated, making a knowingly wrong statement. (Will does not enter the equation, only knowledge). If you knowingly filed a fraudulent tax return - then, yes, you have possibly committed perjury - but unless you are already on the IRS' sight, not much is likely to happen.
Usually the DA's office goes tooth and nail after offenders, so there must be a reason, I presume.
Usually those are disguised as arguments that there are not actually any self-made men, but people who rode on their society.
Hmm, isn't there a specific offense of "reckless endangerment of a child"?
Quoting from a recent post[1] on a law professor blog regarding the relationship between the states and the federal government on criminal matters:
"...[T]he states and the federal government are not exactly co-equals in the criminal law sphere. The states have general police powers while the federal government has limited powers; the states inherited the common law while the federal government must enact statutory offenses."
[1] http://www.volokh.com/2012/08/03/can-federal-border-patrol-a...
Which can make things interesting when the governments don't agree on whether something should be illegal or not...
There are some standards that are widely applied across the states (like the MPC, some model jury instructions), and obviously the legal issues are very similar, but there are definitely major important differences between the states; for instance, groping a 17 year old in Alabama might be an aggravated sexual battery crime, but doing the same thing in Oregon might be a basic sexual assault.
One broad statute is honest services fraud. Basically, if you have a fiduciary duty to someone and commit an act that could reasonably be expected cause economic harm, you've committed a felony.
There are many other laws that could be used to lock up many bankers, assuming the will existed to do so.
Reckless endangerment in Nevada occurs when someone allegedly "neglects any duty imposed by law in willful or wanton disregard of the safety of persons or property." So if a police officer believes that you were deliberately jaywalking in a careless way that could hurt someone else, you may face reckless endangerment charges.
If no death or substantial bodily harm results from an alleged act of reckless endangerment in Nevada, the charge will be a gross misdemeanor carrying up to $2,000 in fines and/or up to one year in jail.