I didn’t believe this one when I saw it but former Enron criminal Jeffrey Skilling received a decade off his sentence for surrendering assets the government had already seized. From the article:
Pay and go free sooner!
Enron’s collapse wiped out more than $2bn in employee pensions, $60bn in Enron stock and cost thousands their jobs. The $40m seized by the government will be distributed to victims of Enron’s fraud.
Yet another case showing the huge difference between when a rich person deals with the justice system and when the rest of us deal with it. I wonder if a person convicted for possessing, say, $100 worth of illegal drugs on them could just pay a small portion of that and receive a reduced sentence? No? Didn’t think so.
And let’s do some quick math here. $62 billion in damage caused to thousands, and maybe tens of thousands, of people. He pays $40 million back. That’s roughly .06% of the damage caused. I wonder if I can pay that percentage of my next traffic ticket and the government will accept that as basically all square?
The one positive from this was the simple fact he did go to prison over the massive fraud he committed and will serve a good chuck of time. Still waiting for the folks responsible for the bigger financial crisis to see some prison time…