6 ms·
Harsh sentence for a case where all the money was paid back.
by gfosco 9y ago
Harsh sentence for a case where all the money was paid back.
- sincerely 9y agoillegal is illegal
- ryanlol 9y ago'illegal is illegal' is not at all how sentencing works. Edit: Not sure if you guys are aware of this, but sentencing is actually completely separate from the part of the trial where they decide whether you're guilty or not.
- giarc 9y agoUnfortunately it's how he got into the mess. Without illegal actions there are no sentencing procedures.
- daxorid 9y agoIt's not quite that easy, unfortunately. The vast majority of us, just by sheer ignorance of the contents of the enormous Federal Register, unknowingly commit at least a few federal felonies per year. If the Feds want you in prison, they'll find a way.
- Clubber 9y agoThis is absolutely correct. There are shelves and shelves of laws that no one really knows. If someone wants to go after you, it won't take much research.
- DanBC 9y agoHe didn't accidentally defraud people. He knew exactly what he was doing.
- Clubber 9y agoYes, but that's not the point. The point is the US government has many ways of throwing people in jail it doesn't like, including me or you. That's doesn't equate with a free society.
- DanBC 9y agoIt doesn't seem relevant to the thread, where he knowingly and willingly engaged in a massive theft-related offence against large numbers of people. That's not "the government is out to get you", that's "the government punishes crooks".
- s73v3r_ 9y agoNeither does being perfectly free to defraud investors.
- ryanlol 9y agoDid anyone actually suggest that anywhere here?
- dragonwriter 9y ago> The vast majority of us, just by sheer ignorance of the contents of the enormous Federal Register, unknowingly commit at least a few federal felonies per year. Federal felonies (and federal crimes more generally) are defined by the US Code, and almost entirely Title 18 of that Code, not the Federal Register. The Federal Register is the regular publication of regulatory process documents, most of which is notices and procedural background information; the operational material from the Federal Register is codified in, for the most part, the Code of Federal Regulations (which is much smaller than the Federal Register; while not a perfect analogy, you could think of the Federal Register as the Git repository for the Code of Federal Regulations, with commit messages that usually far exceed the size of code changes.) The CFR itself is occasionally relevant to defining the parameters of crimes (not all of which are felonies), in that in certain cases Congress has made violation of certain regulatory orders criminal. But it's only a very small share of the CFR (itself much smaller than the Federal Register) that is relevant to that.
- ryanlol 9y agoWith all due respect, I fail to see how this is at all relevant. Could you help me out here? It feels like you and others here are suggesting that we should not discuss sentencing policies in general because Shkreli was guilty, that seems insane to me.
- gfosco 9y agoof course, but 7 years is a very long time. It could have been shorter, considering the lack of actual damages.
- justinjlynn 9y agolesson one: don't play games with other people's money, unless they won't have any left when you're done. The second part is secret /s
- cowsandmilk 9y agoWhy do you believe there were no actual damages? Because investors eventually got their money back after years of fraud? (I would also argue the investors in Retrophin lost millions in returns due to Shkreli's paying off MSMB Capital investors, but that is not what he was convicted of)
- gfosco 9y agoThey actually had their money tripled. Tripled. Tripled.
- dragonwriter 9y agoWere this a civil case for damages, that would be more relevant. The criminality of getting other people to give up their property with false representations is not eliminated by paying them back plus extra later, however. Civil damages mostly addresses the harm caused, criminal punishment is less about the harm caused by a particular act and more about the risk to society of normalizing the behavior.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoYeah, they got lucky. Can you guarantee that the next set of investors he pulls this fraud with will be as lucky?
- oh_sigh 9y agoHow much longer than normal were investor funds locked up for?
- topbanana 9y agoThe judicial system doesn't work like that sadly
- ModernMech 9y ago"Your honor, I must protest this sentence! After all, my clients paid back all the money they stole from the bank!"
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gfosco 9y agoNot really a good analogy. They invested with him, he lost it but found another way to make that money back. There wasn't any theft.
- jartelt 9y agoIf I give you money to invest in Alphabet stock and you instead invest it in lottery tickets, that seems like theft to me regardless of whether the lottery tickets pay off or not.
- jonnycomputer 9y agoit surely does sound like people are looking for excuses for the guy. it was fraud, and he has only himself to blame.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoI think it's just that so many people don't want to have to think about their intentions when they do things.
- danso 9y agoHe wasn't prosecuted for theft (or embezzlement). He was prosecuted for fraud.
- meowface 9y agoHe not only lost it, he lied and said he did not lose it and that their money was safe and sound. Big difference. When you fabricate numbers and lie to people who have given you money, you're committing fraud, regardless of your ultimate intentions or if you manage to recover the money through other means.
- dragonwriter 9y agoEspecially given that the funnelling other money to cover the losses happened after some investors and the SEC were already on to the fraud.