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If a private individual did the things set out here they'd be criminally liable. When a company executive orders employees to do these things, they're not facin

If a private individual did the things set out here they'd be criminally liable. When a company executive orders employees to do these things, they're not facing any criminal complaint at all (any of them). See also Wells Fargo multiple thefts (both fraudulent accounts with fees, and literally entire homes/all possessions). It is pretty evident that many laws are constructed (e.g. CFAA) wherein there's one rule for individuals and a completely different rule for executives/companies. I understand that the FTC themselves cannot jail people. I don't understand why the justice department cannot.

cobrabyte 5y ago
How this isn't a criminal case is beyond me. The dissenting judge is correct: if there is no monetary penalty, what's the point of the judgment?
Chris2048 5y ago
If corps are people, maybe they should receive jail sentences as such - and then their executives & beneficial owners can carry them out based on liability. A CEO that takes full control and makes a one-man-shop would therefore be fully liable for any sentence received, and can only avoid this be sharing control.
- leesalminen 5y ago
  So if I were to own 1 share of $AMZN, I’d be criminally liable for anything the corporation does? Would I do 10 minutes in jail or something?
  - DoctorOW 5y ago
    I don't think you're liable for any of Amazon's decisions. Maybe if you voted yes on "Engage in crime" but the decisions of executives are their own.
    - leesalminen 5y ago
      That makes more sense. Maybe I was reading into the parent’s use of the term “beneficial owners”. Every shareholder of a public corporation is a “beneficial owner”.
  - jellicle 5y ago
    Perhaps people should. There's no intrinsic reason why a system must exist where certain kinds of enterprises can be FUNDED by me, I can receive PROFIT from them, but I cannot receive any CONSEQUENCES from them if they commit crimes. One might even say the system encourages the commission of crimes and therefore is clearly in need of reform.
    - ta988 5y ago
      Then company ability to distribute dividends should be restrained if they engaged in criminal actions.
  - dec0dedab0de 5y ago
    I used to argue for exactly this. The thing is that people would only invest in companies with executives they personally trust. Which may be a good thing overall, but would be a big problem in the short term. I definitely think board members and Top executives should be held criminally liable for the actions of the company. Unless they can prove it was a specific bad actor, and that their policies didn't encourage illegal behavior, and that they weren't negligent in discovering and stopping said behavior. That is, if a delivery driver crashes his car because he was drinking on the job then that is on him. If the same delivery driver is speeding because he was given a list of deliveries that were not possible to make on time, that is on the executives. Conspiracy to break the speed limit, maybe even RICO charges. Even for something that simple.
    - yupper32 5y ago
      "Unless they can prove it was a specific bad actor" That's the opposite of the entire basis of the US criminal justice system. Innocent until proven guilty. You need to prove it was them. Not have them prove it was another bad actor.
      - 8note 5y ago
        Youve already been proven guilty by that point If you can prove somebody else was fully responsible, it goes to them
      - mlyle 5y ago
        No, it's not. There are affirmative defenses: things that can excuse you from criminal liability if you prove a certain set of facts. For instance, self defense is generally an affirmative defense: something that the defense must prove to avoid conviction, instead of something the prosecution must disprove.
    - nathancahill 5y ago
      > maybe even RICO charges Paging @Popehat...
    - curryst 5y ago
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
    That actually seems like a great idea. Not 10 minutes of jail time, but some form of liability. If orgs are incentivized to increase shareholder value, and those shareholders face no liability for wrongdoing done to increase their assets worth, then the incentives are out of whack. I don't know what kinds of liability makes sense, but some form seems like a great idea. If you own one share of amazon, and it gets some penalty, then you face 0.00000002% of that penalty in some way.
    - anonymousab 5y ago
      Make it actual jail time, and for the company itself. No monetary flow, no work being done, no contracts honored, restricted and slow (if any) access to assets, etc. Would it be traumatic? For sure. Potentially "life-ruining" for the company and the people close to it? Sure. Just like jail and prison are for regular people.
      - sixothree 5y ago
        Charge them $15 for a 10 minute phone call while we're at it.
      - heavyset_go 5y ago
        While in corporate jail, they can also be contracted to perform labor for less than a $1 an hour like human prisoners are in the US.
      - _-david-_ 5y ago
        You would almost certainly destroy the jobs of innocent workers who did not even know the crime was taking place. That is punishing innocent people along side with the guilty.
  - idiotsecant 5y ago
    Clearly this is meant to be silly but if we take it seriously - Why shouldn't those who stand to benefit from ill-gotten gains be those who suffer the pain when the company breaks the law? At least in a proportional way? If, for example, a felony conviction of a company for fraud incurred a penalty of 10% of the value of the company stock for all stakeholders it would align market price with shadiness of company executives. It would suck getting burned by an executive doing something nefarious you didn't know about but it wouldn't take many events like that to make some very powerful people very interested in ensuring that ethical leadership was in place.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      Because while benefit and control are closely correlated, it's sometimes (purposefully) the case that you can have benefit, without control (or oversight). > a felony conviction of a company for fraud incurred a penalty of 10% of the value of the company stock Doesn't this sort of happen anyway? How would you prevent it increasing again; are you literally collecting a fee from stockholders (like a kind of anti-dividend)? > it would align market price with shadiness of company executives Then corps would just invest more in opaqueness and deniability (which they already do now). Corporations are known for being all PR public face. Plus, it would be easier to tank competition with slander and gossip - making investors even more scandal adverse (but not necessarily more ethically aligned) > make some very powerful people very interested in ensuring that ethical leadership was in place Or that there's an easy scapegoat lined up.
  - sixothree 5y ago
    Did you perform or direct someone to commit an illegal act?
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    I thought a beneficial owner needs to have a certain % share or voting rights? Maybe I'm wrong about that. What I mean is, anyone with enough skin in the game to have ultimate control. Also, I wouldn't assign sentences based on % ownership/compensation, but rather on control-based blame.
- notyourday 5y ago
  > If corps are people, maybe they should receive jail sentences as such - and then their executives & beneficial owners can carry them out based on liability. A CEO that takes full control and makes a one-man-shop would therefore be fully liable for any sentence received, and can only avoid this be sharing control. Not shareholders but the officers and directors of the company. We already have this for financials under Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. There was lots of whining that they could not possibly sign off on it because the financials are too complex and with personal criminal and civil liability for CEO/CFO there would be no CEOs/CFOs that would take it. Act got passed and, as if by magic, CEOs and CFOs decided that taking personally the criminal and civil liability was OK.
- gogopuppygogo 5y ago
  No one would run or invest in a company within a country with such a law. It’s basically a global world. Anyone intelligent would leave.
- jedberg 5y ago
  In this case then nothing would happen, because the "person" is "dead". We need some framework for holding actual people liable for the actions of corporations they control.
paulpauper 5y ago
This is a joke. fraud is fraud. Civil penalties are not a good deterrent
- cobrabyte 5y ago
  I agree, but they weren't even penalized, so there's zero deterrent. It appears the court took into consideration that the company is bankrupt but failed to see the apparent criminal action taken by the company and CEOs.
  - legitster 5y ago
    This was not a court ruling. The FTC is a regulatory body, not a judicial one. It is up for prosecutors to make a an actual criminal case.
leephillips 5y ago
In regard to financial institutions getting away with crime, a former SEC commissioner became exasperated that this had become US government policy by 2015: “the latest series of actions has effectively rendered criminal convictions of financial institutions largely symbolic.” https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/stein-waivers-granted-dissenting-statement.html https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/stein-waivers-granted-dis...
- telchar 5y ago
  That link is both very damning and very succinctly informative of the problem.
makotech222 5y ago
Congrats, you've discovered: "Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie" About 150 years late, though.
legitster 5y ago
IANAL, but it seems like the AG is still well within their power to press charges and consumers are still free to pursue class action.
- canadianfella 5y ago
  I don’t see why your sexual activities are relevant.
- bdcravens 5y ago
  What damages could customers seek? Presumably not much more than the cost of the service, which was only around $20/month.
  - legitster 5y ago
    I don't know - I've been part of class actions where the settlement was much, much higher than than the cost to me. So I think it depends. Hard to see that working here with a completely bankrupt company.
  - Matticus_Rex 5y ago
    Those are the compensatory damages, but punitive damages might be appropriate here on top of those.
  - slg 5y ago
    One of the problems is that they were selling $100 for $10. I was a user and got more than my money’s worth out of MoviePass including the months they committed these abuses. However I could have gotten even more value out of them without these moves. How would you even quantify those damages?
Kinrany 5y ago
I wonder if a general purpose legal framework of applying the same punishment to different types of entities is possible. That way most laws could be worded in a way that applies to private individuals and all types of companies the same way, but then the actual punishment would be applied differently. Specifically, when a company breaks the law, the legal framework would explain the way the responsibility should be shared between the legal entity and the private individuals involved in breaking the law.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  I am frustrated that we continue to have the death penalty for individuals that commit heinous crimes, but we do not have the death penalty for corporations. I feel like when you manage to harm a billion people at a time, the penalty should be that your company is dissolved, it's assets auctioned off, and the trademarks and domains blackholed. And then, since I don't support the death penalty for individuals, the C-levels investigated for their knowing involvement in any related schemes, and if proven aware, given prison time and forbidden from ever operating in a management capacity at any corporation ever again. The problem with corporations is that there is no meaningful disincentive to commit crimes. You succeed, you get rich. You fail, you take your severance, live like a king for a year, and then get hired to do the same at another company. If executive pay is going to come with outsized pay, it should come with outsize risk: Jail executives for their choices when running corporations. For the millions they make, they'll still be lining up for the job.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kbenson 5y ago
    I have some complicated feelings on this, because on the one hand it really makes sense to punish these people and companies and stop this behavior from continuing, and on the other it would suck to be some low level worker and have some bullshit from a CEO cause you to immediately lose your job, and it would also suck as a customer of some non-screwy service of the company to have something you rely on forced to stop. Perhaps a complete replacement of all upper level management over 6 months and possibly a moratorium on board involvement for a time period for board members if it was bad enough would be sufficient? In the "a corporation is a person" analogy that's about the same as some other mind taking over the body, so that might be sufficient. You might have to have some laws that provide some bite for people that want to just jump ship immediately knowing there severance is in danger even if they stay, but it's not like what I'm proposing could happen without new legislation anyway. As long as the payment of severance was handled by new management explicitly, and all replacements happened under explicit notice that the prior employee was being removed for compliance in an illegal activity (so they could fight against paying the severance), I think that would be a fairly good deterrence of bad behavior, since it would affect both employment of themselves and others, it has a good chance of affecting payouts when fired, and it effectively wipes the slate clean while doing what it can to preserve services and employment for as many as possible.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
at-fates-hands 5y ago
I would also trot out ENRON as another example, on a much larger scale. The only person in the entire fiasco that actually did serious jail time was Jeffrey Skilling who was sentenced to 14 years and was released in 2019.
- SilasX 5y ago
  Well, CEO Ken Lay might have done serious jail time as well, but he died before sentencing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay#Enron_bankruptcy_and_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay#Enron_bankruptcy_a... Edit: Given the really suspicious timing, and how the death vacated the conviction, "died".
- tacon 5y ago
  Andy Fastow getting six years is not serious jail time? And his wife got a year. I think they were non-concurrent to allow their young children to have one parent free at all times.
papito 5y ago
Corporations are people!* * until a crime is committed
- Black101 5y ago
  Everyone should get a corporation at birth, and all actions done by that individual should be done for that corporation. Maybe things would change then.
  - gruez 5y ago
    That doesn't work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Factors_for_courts_to_consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Fa...
    - Black101 5y ago
      So you would need to use your sibling's and/or friend's corp?
ardit33 5y ago
Thanks Obama for this. He went full on corporate... and of course Trump and Biden are the same. In both Clinton and Bush eras (both Bushes), there was more pushback on some of these behaviors.

cobrabyte 5y ago

How this isn't a criminal case is beyond me. The dissenting judge is correct: if there is no monetary penalty, what's the point of the judgment?

Chris2048 5y ago

If corps are people, maybe they should receive jail sentences as such - and then their executives & beneficial owners can carry them out based on liability. A CEO that takes full control and makes a one-man-shop would therefore be fully liable for any sentence received, and can only avoid this be sharing control.

leesalminen 5y ago
So if I were to own 1 share of $AMZN, I’d be criminally liable for anything the corporation does? Would I do 10 minutes in jail or something?
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  I don't think you're liable for any of Amazon's decisions. Maybe if you voted yes on "Engage in crime" but the decisions of executives are their own.
  - leesalminen 5y ago
    That makes more sense. Maybe I was reading into the parent’s use of the term “beneficial owners”. Every shareholder of a public corporation is a “beneficial owner”.
- jellicle 5y ago
  Perhaps people should. There's no intrinsic reason why a system must exist where certain kinds of enterprises can be FUNDED by me, I can receive PROFIT from them, but I cannot receive any CONSEQUENCES from them if they commit crimes. One might even say the system encourages the commission of crimes and therefore is clearly in need of reform.
  - ta988 5y ago
    Then company ability to distribute dividends should be restrained if they engaged in criminal actions.
- dec0dedab0de 5y ago
  I used to argue for exactly this. The thing is that people would only invest in companies with executives they personally trust. Which may be a good thing overall, but would be a big problem in the short term. I definitely think board members and Top executives should be held criminally liable for the actions of the company. Unless they can prove it was a specific bad actor, and that their policies didn't encourage illegal behavior, and that they weren't negligent in discovering and stopping said behavior. That is, if a delivery driver crashes his car because he was drinking on the job then that is on him. If the same delivery driver is speeding because he was given a list of deliveries that were not possible to make on time, that is on the executives. Conspiracy to break the speed limit, maybe even RICO charges. Even for something that simple.
  - yupper32 5y ago
    "Unless they can prove it was a specific bad actor" That's the opposite of the entire basis of the US criminal justice system. Innocent until proven guilty. You need to prove it was them. Not have them prove it was another bad actor.
    - 8note 5y ago
      Youve already been proven guilty by that point If you can prove somebody else was fully responsible, it goes to them
    - mlyle 5y ago
      No, it's not. There are affirmative defenses: things that can excuse you from criminal liability if you prove a certain set of facts. For instance, self defense is generally an affirmative defense: something that the defense must prove to avoid conviction, instead of something the prosecution must disprove.
  - nathancahill 5y ago
    > maybe even RICO charges Paging @Popehat...
  - curryst 5y ago
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  That actually seems like a great idea. Not 10 minutes of jail time, but some form of liability. If orgs are incentivized to increase shareholder value, and those shareholders face no liability for wrongdoing done to increase their assets worth, then the incentives are out of whack. I don't know what kinds of liability makes sense, but some form seems like a great idea. If you own one share of amazon, and it gets some penalty, then you face 0.00000002% of that penalty in some way.
  - anonymousab 5y ago
    Make it actual jail time, and for the company itself. No monetary flow, no work being done, no contracts honored, restricted and slow (if any) access to assets, etc. Would it be traumatic? For sure. Potentially "life-ruining" for the company and the people close to it? Sure. Just like jail and prison are for regular people.
    - sixothree 5y ago
      Charge them $15 for a 10 minute phone call while we're at it.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      While in corporate jail, they can also be contracted to perform labor for less than a $1 an hour like human prisoners are in the US.
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      You would almost certainly destroy the jobs of innocent workers who did not even know the crime was taking place. That is punishing innocent people along side with the guilty.
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  Clearly this is meant to be silly but if we take it seriously - Why shouldn't those who stand to benefit from ill-gotten gains be those who suffer the pain when the company breaks the law? At least in a proportional way? If, for example, a felony conviction of a company for fraud incurred a penalty of 10% of the value of the company stock for all stakeholders it would align market price with shadiness of company executives. It would suck getting burned by an executive doing something nefarious you didn't know about but it wouldn't take many events like that to make some very powerful people very interested in ensuring that ethical leadership was in place.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    Because while benefit and control are closely correlated, it's sometimes (purposefully) the case that you can have benefit, without control (or oversight). > a felony conviction of a company for fraud incurred a penalty of 10% of the value of the company stock Doesn't this sort of happen anyway? How would you prevent it increasing again; are you literally collecting a fee from stockholders (like a kind of anti-dividend)? > it would align market price with shadiness of company executives Then corps would just invest more in opaqueness and deniability (which they already do now). Corporations are known for being all PR public face. Plus, it would be easier to tank competition with slander and gossip - making investors even more scandal adverse (but not necessarily more ethically aligned) > make some very powerful people very interested in ensuring that ethical leadership was in place Or that there's an easy scapegoat lined up.
- sixothree 5y ago
  Did you perform or direct someone to commit an illegal act?
- Chris2048 5y ago
  I thought a beneficial owner needs to have a certain % share or voting rights? Maybe I'm wrong about that. What I mean is, anyone with enough skin in the game to have ultimate control. Also, I wouldn't assign sentences based on % ownership/compensation, but rather on control-based blame.
notyourday 5y ago
> If corps are people, maybe they should receive jail sentences as such - and then their executives & beneficial owners can carry them out based on liability. A CEO that takes full control and makes a one-man-shop would therefore be fully liable for any sentence received, and can only avoid this be sharing control. Not shareholders but the officers and directors of the company. We already have this for financials under Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. There was lots of whining that they could not possibly sign off on it because the financials are too complex and with personal criminal and civil liability for CEO/CFO there would be no CEOs/CFOs that would take it. Act got passed and, as if by magic, CEOs and CFOs decided that taking personally the criminal and civil liability was OK.
gogopuppygogo 5y ago
No one would run or invest in a company within a country with such a law. It’s basically a global world. Anyone intelligent would leave.
jedberg 5y ago
In this case then nothing would happen, because the "person" is "dead". We need some framework for holding actual people liable for the actions of corporations they control.

paulpauper 5y ago

This is a joke. fraud is fraud. Civil penalties are not a good deterrent

cobrabyte 5y ago
I agree, but they weren't even penalized, so there's zero deterrent. It appears the court took into consideration that the company is bankrupt but failed to see the apparent criminal action taken by the company and CEOs.
- legitster 5y ago
  This was not a court ruling. The FTC is a regulatory body, not a judicial one. It is up for prosecutors to make a an actual criminal case.

leephillips 5y ago

In regard to financial institutions getting away with crime, a former SEC commissioner became exasperated that this had become US government policy by 2015: “the latest series of actions has effectively rendered criminal convictions of financial institutions largely symbolic.” https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/stein-waivers-granted-dissenting-statement.html https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/stein-waivers-granted-dis...

telchar 5y ago
That link is both very damning and very succinctly informative of the problem.

makotech222 5y ago

Congrats, you've discovered: "Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie" About 150 years late, though.

legitster 5y ago

IANAL, but it seems like the AG is still well within their power to press charges and consumers are still free to pursue class action.

canadianfella 5y ago
I don’t see why your sexual activities are relevant.
bdcravens 5y ago
What damages could customers seek? Presumably not much more than the cost of the service, which was only around $20/month.
- legitster 5y ago
  I don't know - I've been part of class actions where the settlement was much, much higher than than the cost to me. So I think it depends. Hard to see that working here with a completely bankrupt company.
- Matticus_Rex 5y ago
  Those are the compensatory damages, but punitive damages might be appropriate here on top of those.
- slg 5y ago
  One of the problems is that they were selling $100 for $10. I was a user and got more than my money’s worth out of MoviePass including the months they committed these abuses. However I could have gotten even more value out of them without these moves. How would you even quantify those damages?

Kinrany 5y ago

I wonder if a general purpose legal framework of applying the same punishment to different types of entities is possible. That way most laws could be worded in a way that applies to private individuals and all types of companies the same way, but then the actual punishment would be applied differently. Specifically, when a company breaks the law, the legal framework would explain the way the responsibility should be shared between the legal entity and the private individuals involved in breaking the law.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
I am frustrated that we continue to have the death penalty for individuals that commit heinous crimes, but we do not have the death penalty for corporations. I feel like when you manage to harm a billion people at a time, the penalty should be that your company is dissolved, it's assets auctioned off, and the trademarks and domains blackholed. And then, since I don't support the death penalty for individuals, the C-levels investigated for their knowing involvement in any related schemes, and if proven aware, given prison time and forbidden from ever operating in a management capacity at any corporation ever again. The problem with corporations is that there is no meaningful disincentive to commit crimes. You succeed, you get rich. You fail, you take your severance, live like a king for a year, and then get hired to do the same at another company. If executive pay is going to come with outsized pay, it should come with outsize risk: Jail executives for their choices when running corporations. For the millions they make, they'll still be lining up for the job.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kbenson 5y ago
  I have some complicated feelings on this, because on the one hand it really makes sense to punish these people and companies and stop this behavior from continuing, and on the other it would suck to be some low level worker and have some bullshit from a CEO cause you to immediately lose your job, and it would also suck as a customer of some non-screwy service of the company to have something you rely on forced to stop. Perhaps a complete replacement of all upper level management over 6 months and possibly a moratorium on board involvement for a time period for board members if it was bad enough would be sufficient? In the "a corporation is a person" analogy that's about the same as some other mind taking over the body, so that might be sufficient. You might have to have some laws that provide some bite for people that want to just jump ship immediately knowing there severance is in danger even if they stay, but it's not like what I'm proposing could happen without new legislation anyway. As long as the payment of severance was handled by new management explicitly, and all replacements happened under explicit notice that the prior employee was being removed for compliance in an illegal activity (so they could fight against paying the severance), I think that would be a fairly good deterrence of bad behavior, since it would affect both employment of themselves and others, it has a good chance of affecting payouts when fired, and it effectively wipes the slate clean while doing what it can to preserve services and employment for as many as possible.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

at-fates-hands 5y ago

I would also trot out ENRON as another example, on a much larger scale. The only person in the entire fiasco that actually did serious jail time was Jeffrey Skilling who was sentenced to 14 years and was released in 2019.

SilasX 5y ago
Well, CEO Ken Lay might have done serious jail time as well, but he died before sentencing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay#Enron_bankruptcy_and_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay#Enron_bankruptcy_a... Edit: Given the really suspicious timing, and how the death vacated the conviction, "died".
tacon 5y ago
Andy Fastow getting six years is not serious jail time? And his wife got a year. I think they were non-concurrent to allow their young children to have one parent free at all times.

papito 5y ago

Corporations are people!* * until a crime is committed

Black101 5y ago
Everyone should get a corporation at birth, and all actions done by that individual should be done for that corporation. Maybe things would change then.
- gruez 5y ago
  That doesn't work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Factors_for_courts_to_consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Fa...
  - Black101 5y ago
    So you would need to use your sibling's and/or friend's corp?

ardit33 5y ago

Thanks Obama for this. He went full on corporate... and of course Trump and Biden are the same. In both Clinton and Bush eras (both Bushes), there was more pushback on some of these behaviors.