If you’re gonna get caught stealing, steal big. From the Washington Post:
HOUSTON — Convicted ex-Enron Corp. CEO Jeffrey Skilling’s more than 24-year prison sentence for his role in the once mighty energy giant’s collapse could be reduced by as many as 10 years if a federal judge approves an agreement reached Wednesday between prosecutors and defense attorneys.
Under the agreement, which Justice Department officials say includes a previous court-ordered reduction of as much as nine years, Skilling’s original sentence will be reduced to somewhere between 14 and 17.5 years…
Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said the agreement will allow victims of Enron’s collapse to finally receive more than $40 million in restitution. The ongoing status of the case has so far prevented the government from distributing Skilling’s seized assets to victims, according to the agreement.
Skilling was convicted in 2006 on 19 counts of conspiracy, securities fraud, insider trading and lying to auditors for his role in the downfall of Houston-based Enron. The company collapsed into bankruptcy in 2001 under the weight of years of illicit business deals and accounting tricks…
The U.S. Supreme Court said in 2010 that one of Skilling’s convictions was flawed when it sharply curtailed the use of the “honest services” fraud law — a short addendum to the federal mail and wire fraud statute that makes it illegal to scheme to deprive investors of “the intangible right to honest services.”
The Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors can use the law only in cases where evidence shows the defendant accepted bribes or kickbacks and that because Skilling’s misconduct entailed no such things, he did not conspire to commit honest-services fraud…
Skilling, 59, was the highest-ranking executive to be punished for Enron’s downfall. Enron founder Kenneth Lay’s similar convictions were vacated after he died of heart disease less than two months after trial.
Enron’s collapse put more than 5,000 people out of work, wiped out more than $2 billion in employee pensions and rendered worthless $60 billion in Enron stock. Its aftershocks were felt across the city and the energy industry.
Imagine the kind of brain that can decide “Sure, he destroyed the company and wiped out thousands of peoples’ financial security, but none of his innumerable lies or deceptions amounted to a violation of honest services!”…
I know violence is never the answer, so I can only hope that Jeff Skilling never lives a day outside of prison when he isn’t confronted by one of his many victims… pointing out exactly how much misery he’s caused.
MattR
THe settlement should include a clause where the victims get to take turns kicking Skilling in the nuts. To be fair to the prosecutors, the deal is not that bad when you take into account that “The appeals court called for Skilling’s sentence to be reduced to somewhere between 15.6 years to 19.5 years.” (from the WashPo article) Reducing the sentence by another 1.6 to 2 years is not a terrible price to free up that settlement money. I am sure some of the families could use it, even though it is probably a tiny percentage of what they put in.
(EDIT: Definitely agree with your general take on the “honest services” aspect. Maybe the actual law is specific enough that the courts had no choice, but it seems more likely that the courts continued their pattern of ruling to protect business at the expense of average citizens)
cbear
The day one of these ratfucking, cocksucking, motherfucking “white collar” criminals gets the same EXACT sentence as a black guy robbing a 7-Eleven will be the day when there is finally some fucking justice in this country.
Omnes Omnibus
AL, I hold no brief for Skilling and I hope that he spends the rest of his miserable life in prison, but phrases like “honest services fraud” are legal terms of art. They do not necessarily have the same meaning in legal terms that they might seem to have in common parlance.
cthulhu
While I get Skilling presided over everything and I feel no sympathy for his still substantial sentence (if only ANY of the 2008 crash people could be held accountable in such a way) I also think there’s a certain injustice of concentrating all of the punishment at the Lay/Skilling level. What about the morally bankrupt energy traders (etc.) who, sure, may have lost some ill-gotten gains, but ultimately walked away with no legal imprint as to their terrible premeditated sins as part of the cogs in the machine? I suspect many of these people were freed to fail upward and continue to plunder in other arenas.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
This is an egregious misrepresentation of what happened. No one said that Skilling didn’t violate the provision of honest services in a non-legal sense. What happened is that the Supreme Court said that the way that the law was applied was unconstitutionally vague. It should be noted that it was not just the usual suspects that ruled this way. Ginsburg wrote the opinion and all of this justices except, I think, Kennedy joined at least in part the section dealing with the question of honest services fraud.
As galling as it is, the honest services fraud statute really was too vague to be prosecuting people under.
Shalimar
@cbear: Someone robbing Jeff Skilling’s home would probably receive a longer sentence than Skilling. Have to protect rich people from parasites above all else.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Isn’t it interesting how there’s a few commenters here who manage to find a way to spin every article posted here about what these assholes actually did into some sort of legal semantics?
Crusty Dem
I knew a few of the Enron folk in Houston (not well), my least favorite observation was that the traders and people high enough to know the whole thing was a fraud got out a year or two before the shit hit the fan and landed in some pretty sweet jobs while the poor suckers who had no idea what was going on lost their jobs, their pensions, and were often blacklisted for being associated with a corrupt company. Ugly ugly ugly.
But not as ugly as the shit Ken Lay’s wife sold in her personal secondhand store she opened up. Holy shit, money does not equal taste. And the balls it must take to try to sell a used bed for $20,000.
Omnes Omnibus
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Since this discussion is about legal semantics, it isn’t at all weird that legal semantics comes into play. No one is fucking defending Skilling’s actions. Legal terms of art use ordinary words in particular combinations to mean very specific things.
Villago Delenda Est
Your US Supreme Court in action, tossing out the baby with the bathwater as they dither over the technicalities of the law when it’s time to punish parasitical vermin of the 1%. If only Skilling had knocked over just a liquor store, we’d never be having this conversation.
Origuy
Reminds me of this scene.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est:
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
burnspbesq
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Which part of “it’s a legal issue” are you struggling to understand?
Sheesh.
Nellie in NZ
Can someone here explain why anyone bothered to vacate Ken Lay’s sentence after he died? Isn’t that a tad unusual? Did that allow the family to retain his assets? Of course, his death seemed a tad fishy at the time (very quickly passed over in the media) and then the vacating of the sentence?
burnspbesq
Interestingly, the Supreme Court’s decision in Skilling hasn’t deterred aggressive Federal prosecutors from continuing to push the envelope on honest services fraud, nor dissuaded the lower Federal courts from allowing such envelope-pushing.
http://www.nixonpeabody.com/DC_Circuit_sharpens_definition_of_honest_services_fraud
Comrade Nimrod Humperdink
ah Enron… at least a couple of responsible parties went to jail over that. Makes what’s come since ’08 look like “the good old days.” The entire state of California should sue them again, this time for triggering the downward spiral that led to the recall and rhe Guvernator.
Todd
Sometimes, it is.
Dick Fuld getting punched in the face is a classic, and just once, I’d enjoy reading a story about a 1% fraudster getting whacked, pour encouragement les autres.
danielx
Prosecuting roaring assholes and giving them hard time for deeds of corporate malfeasance is so 2006. The Department of Justice has much better things to do with its time now, like pursuing hackers and closing medical marijuana dispensaries.
Just ask Angelo Mozilo, for one (of hundreds).
OzarkHillbilly
It may not be the answer, but it’s a start.
Hunter
What strikes me most about this story is the reminder that it wasn’t all that long ago that we actually used to prosecute corporate crooks.
How times have changed.
Ted & Hellen
Anne, you’re adorable.
I don’t agree with this. I would love to see some of these fuckers beaten in the streets, and all of their assailants escape capture…I’d enjoy seeing some cops accidentally not notice while it was happening too.
I don’t think I’d mind a few of their mansions burning down from mysterious causes either. We the sheeple are far too passive in this country.
Also too: Don’t we all know Ken Lay is on a tiny, private island somewhere with his Polynesian mistress and piles of cash? I didn’t believe the heart disease story when it was alleged, and I don’t believe it now.
The Pale Scot
“I know violence is never the answer”
Well actually, I’m all in favor of the use of flogging for white collar crimes. It wouldn’t do shit to most violent criminals, surviving it’d become a badge of honor, But use it on some pansy-assed white accountant types, I think it be effective,
For Jeffy, how about 100 lashes given in front of every power plant that contributed ergs to his con. Or just a straight one lash for 100 bucks grafted.
Hell, just up a row of flogging crosses on Wall street and start swinging away to pour encourager les autres.
Mino
I wonder when ANY of the services would have been honest since the entire enterprise was criminal. That Judge was simply looking for an excuse to vacate white color crime.
Mino
@Omnes Omnibus: Curious, since presumably Skillings very salary was paid to him under the expectation that he would act to lie and defraud, where is any line possible?
Mino
@Omnes Omnibus: Uh, I would say that the Law was not cut down in pursuit of the Devil, but to enable the Devil.
MomSense
My mom lived in Houston in the 90s and I remember going past the Enron building and thinking that the E was awfully precarious looking. I remember asking her if it was a legitimate company and wondering why they would want such an unstable looking symbol.
Mino
@Mino: Freudian slip there …”White collar” crime.
Felinious Wench
Psychopath.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mino: Since the Supreme Court ruled that “honest services” violations require bribes or kickbacks and there is no evidence that Skilling received bribes or kickbacks, the specific provision does not apply. It doesn’t mean that what Skilling did wasn’t illegal and wrong, just that it wasn’t a violation of that particular law.
Interrobang
@Todd: And don’t call Buzz Aldrin a coward to his face, either.
Personally, I found I stopped being bullied in high school, post-haste, after I started hitting back. Granted, I was in graduate school by the time Columbine happened, so zero tolerance wasn’t a thing, but it worked for me. Bullies generally stop when met with resistance, a lesson both of our justice systems would do well to relearn.
(Psst, the phrase is “pour encourager les autres,” or “to encourage the others,” so the “to” is superfluous. Yeah, I’m that much of a pedant, I’ll correct people’s grammar in my second language. I guess that’s why I’m a technical writer IRL…)
TenguPhule
Abbreviated for honesty.
JGabriel
Anne Laurie @ Top:
I don’t know if that’s such a great idea. If Skilling’s record at Enron is any indication, he might be the kind of person who enjoys hearing of other people’s misery.
.
kuvasz
Good. Let the mother fucker out of jail. He’ll be dead in a week. There are hundreds of people just waiting for him on the outside.