Does Bernie Madoff's sentence lie on or off the line connecting your two datapoints?

Bernie Madoff's mistake is that he screwed over other rich people.

I like (as in don't like) how that's the excuse for every counter example. Just like how Martha Stewart only went to jail because she didn't play golf with the right people.

Agreed. Great wealth and connections didn't seem to help Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon (a billionaire) avoid prison for insider trading. Or Rajat Gupta. Or the ~60 other wealthy hedge fund managers and their associates who have been convicted in the investigation. (Or, for that matter, Michael Milken.)

In 1980s hundreds of banksters went to jail in loans&savings scandal. US went to the dogs: 1. Militarily: terrorism as tactics is just effective (especially cost-effective). US looks like it is trying to kill a fly using a machine gun. Good luck! 2. Politically: corrupt to the core. As weak as never before. 3. Economically: capitalism is really not about being in debt. It is about capital accumulation via savings. Currently, the US is the biggest debtor in the History of the World. 600% gdp - that's our total debt.

Is your comment related to mine or was the reply link just conveniently placed?

You're seeing a pattern in two datapoints?

I see a pattern of off topic stories being posted to HN

you have terrible reading comprehension.

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.