"Abrams did not actually go to jail for backdating stock options. What she pleaded guilty to in a criminal case[1] was listing a false exercise date for her opt

"Abrams did not actually go to jail for backdating stock options. What she pleaded guilty to in a criminal case[1] was listing a false exercise date for her options on her tax returns. That meant more of her profits got taxed as capital gains (at a lower rate), less as ordinary income. Lowering your marginal tax rate is a silly reason to risk jail, but that’s a separate question. In his post, Horowitz says, “Michelle ultimately served 3 1/2 months in jail for her part in [her old employer’s] stock option practice — the same practice that we nearly implemented at Opsware.” Well, sort of. Certainly the charges against Abrams were a consequence of the backdating investigation. It’s safe to guess, though, that backdating company loans to executives (something else that happened at Abrams’ earlier company) and switching around exercise dates to cut his own taxes weren’t practices Horowitz was planning to implement. You don’t need a great general counsel to steer clear of this. Just following the instructions on TurboTax would probably do it." https://web.archive.org/web/20150108121957/http://go.bloomberg.com/market-now/2014/02/12/dont-worry-ben-its-a-long-way-to-san-quenti/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150108121957/http://go.bloombe... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130530050608/http://www.justice.gov/usao/can/news/2010/2010_09_16_abrams.guiltyplea.press.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20130530050608/http://www.justic...