4 ms·

Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for purely financial crimes, surely the DOJ could stack up enough felonies to send the Sacklers to prison for

Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for purely financial crimes, surely the DOJ could stack up enough felonies to send the Sacklers to prison for a couple centuries? And given the tens of thousands killed by the opioid crisis and the Sacklers' vast financial resources and access to non-extraditable jurisdictions, I think it would be entirely appropriate to hold them without bail pending trial.

tptacek 5y ago
Madoff faced a straightforward case. He was the proprietor of the largest known Ponzi scheme in I think the history of the world. Notably: running a Ponzi scheme is already clearly a felony; no novel or even interesting theory of law was required to charge him (for Mail Fraud, Securities Fraud, Wire Fraud, and Money Laundering, among others). Even then, the sentencing guidelines complicated things for prosecutors. None of the offenses Madoff was convicted of carried a life imprisonment sentence, but the sentencing guidelines calculations called for one, which meant he had to be charged with the statutory maximums for all his offenses. My point isn't that the Sacklers couldn't be charged criminally, just that the rules for doing so are complicated, and prosecutors can't just make them up. A not-unlikely result of trying to secure a 150-year sentence for a Sackler is that they might simply win the case. If you have a theory of how the Sacklers and their henchpeople could be made to face decades in prison, a straightforward way to articulate that theory would be to cite the offenses you'd see them charged with. Then we can look at the jury instructions for those offenses and see how difficult it would be to convict them under those offenses.
- pseudo0 5y ago
  "We might not win" is an excuse prosecutors and politicians use to avoid cases they don't want to take. It sure is strange that this is the case for a well-connected billionaire family... I believe the Sacklers should be charged with everything the DOJ's legal experts think has a shot at success, and in the interim they should pursue asset seizure, freeze assets under AML rules, and seek to hold the defendants without bail until they can be tried. After all, what is the point of these legally questionable tactics if they are used against two-bit pot dealers yet prosecutors are too afraid to leverage them against those with actual power? We've established these tactics and techniques are apparently legal and morally justifiable, so let's put the screws to those who truly deserve it. Worst case, maybe the Sacklers will even use some of those billions to take some of these issues to the Supreme Court and unfuck the system a little bit for the rest of us.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    Ok. Say how.
- mjreacher 5y ago
  I'm not familiar with NY state law but could something like negligent homicide fit the bill? They were negligent (pushing pills (either knowingly or knowing it was likely) that it would significantly contribute to an opioid epidemic) and it lead to people dying as a result (homicide).
  - tptacek 5y ago
    A bunch of people have written about this. One major obstacle is that it's difficult under the law to get the Sacklers themselves convicted for actions taken random executives in the corporation, especially if (as has been written) the Sacklers were not themselves intimately involved in the operations of Purdue, but rather just the beneficiaries. I'm not here to defend the Sacklers, who are odious. I'm just saying that there are reasons they aren't on trial for their lives, but rather having their assets attacked. (I have no opinions about the immunity from further suit they've apparently obtained.)
    - mjreacher 5y ago
      I guess ultimately it does come down to legal questions but reading some of the cases against them such as this [0] it doesn't seem like there's no ammunition for prosecutors to use. For example on pages (using page numbers listed at the bottom of the page) 104-105 that the Sacklers knew of several doctors that were suspected of prescribing opioids inappropriately yet continued to sell to them. Another example on page 112 states that Sacklers knew that they were selling to an illegal pill mill yet neither stopped selling to them nor reported it for 2 years. I note that other directors and executives are also named as defendants in this case. It most certainly doesn't seem that the Sacklers weren't involved in operations of Perdue, maybe not at a day to day level but they certainly were reported to and advised by Perdue staff very regularly (and they demanded plenty from the staff too). [0]: https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2019/01/31/Massachusetts%20AGO%20Amended%20Complaint%202019-01-31.pdf https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2019/01/31/Massachusett...
      - tptacek 5y ago
        No, it doesn't really say that at all. It says that staff reported to the board that they suspected doctors of diverting pills. In court, prosecutors would have to prove not only that a specific Sackler knew about this, but that they intentionally directed staff to continue supplying opioids to that doctor. The Sackler, in turn, would have an array of defenses, ranging from "I expected staff to stop supplying opioids to that doctor" to "I wasn't involved in that decision but merely present at a meeting where that statistic among many was discussed". The burden in a criminal case is far higher than "preponderance of evidence".
- TomSwirly 5y ago
  > If you have a theory of how the Sacklers and their henchpeople could be made to face decades in prison, "Justice will always be impossible. You should just give up and accept that great crimes will always be rewarded by billions." -you

tptacek 5y ago

Madoff faced a straightforward case. He was the proprietor of the largest known Ponzi scheme in I think the history of the world. Notably: running a Ponzi scheme is already clearly a felony; no novel or even interesting theory of law was required to charge him (for Mail Fraud, Securities Fraud, Wire Fraud, and Money Laundering, among others). Even then, the sentencing guidelines complicated things for prosecutors. None of the offenses Madoff was convicted of carried a life imprisonment sentence, but the sentencing guidelines calculations called for one, which meant he had to be charged with the statutory maximums for all his offenses. My point isn't that the Sacklers couldn't be charged criminally, just that the rules for doing so are complicated, and prosecutors can't just make them up. A not-unlikely result of trying to secure a 150-year sentence for a Sackler is that they might simply win the case. If you have a theory of how the Sacklers and their henchpeople could be made to face decades in prison, a straightforward way to articulate that theory would be to cite the offenses you'd see them charged with. Then we can look at the jury instructions for those offenses and see how difficult it would be to convict them under those offenses.

pseudo0 5y ago
"We might not win" is an excuse prosecutors and politicians use to avoid cases they don't want to take. It sure is strange that this is the case for a well-connected billionaire family... I believe the Sacklers should be charged with everything the DOJ's legal experts think has a shot at success, and in the interim they should pursue asset seizure, freeze assets under AML rules, and seek to hold the defendants without bail until they can be tried. After all, what is the point of these legally questionable tactics if they are used against two-bit pot dealers yet prosecutors are too afraid to leverage them against those with actual power? We've established these tactics and techniques are apparently legal and morally justifiable, so let's put the screws to those who truly deserve it. Worst case, maybe the Sacklers will even use some of those billions to take some of these issues to the Supreme Court and unfuck the system a little bit for the rest of us.
- tptacek 5y ago
  Ok. Say how.
mjreacher 5y ago
I'm not familiar with NY state law but could something like negligent homicide fit the bill? They were negligent (pushing pills (either knowingly or knowing it was likely) that it would significantly contribute to an opioid epidemic) and it lead to people dying as a result (homicide).
- tptacek 5y ago
  A bunch of people have written about this. One major obstacle is that it's difficult under the law to get the Sacklers themselves convicted for actions taken random executives in the corporation, especially if (as has been written) the Sacklers were not themselves intimately involved in the operations of Purdue, but rather just the beneficiaries. I'm not here to defend the Sacklers, who are odious. I'm just saying that there are reasons they aren't on trial for their lives, but rather having their assets attacked. (I have no opinions about the immunity from further suit they've apparently obtained.)
  - mjreacher 5y ago
    I guess ultimately it does come down to legal questions but reading some of the cases against them such as this [0] it doesn't seem like there's no ammunition for prosecutors to use. For example on pages (using page numbers listed at the bottom of the page) 104-105 that the Sacklers knew of several doctors that were suspected of prescribing opioids inappropriately yet continued to sell to them. Another example on page 112 states that Sacklers knew that they were selling to an illegal pill mill yet neither stopped selling to them nor reported it for 2 years. I note that other directors and executives are also named as defendants in this case. It most certainly doesn't seem that the Sacklers weren't involved in operations of Perdue, maybe not at a day to day level but they certainly were reported to and advised by Perdue staff very regularly (and they demanded plenty from the staff too). [0]: https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2019/01/31/Massachusetts%20AGO%20Amended%20Complaint%202019-01-31.pdf https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2019/01/31/Massachusett...
    - tptacek 5y ago
      No, it doesn't really say that at all. It says that staff reported to the board that they suspected doctors of diverting pills. In court, prosecutors would have to prove not only that a specific Sackler knew about this, but that they intentionally directed staff to continue supplying opioids to that doctor. The Sackler, in turn, would have an array of defenses, ranging from "I expected staff to stop supplying opioids to that doctor" to "I wasn't involved in that decision but merely present at a meeting where that statistic among many was discussed". The burden in a criminal case is far higher than "preponderance of evidence".
TomSwirly 5y ago
> If you have a theory of how the Sacklers and their henchpeople could be made to face decades in prison, "Justice will always be impossible. You should just give up and accept that great crimes will always be rewarded by billions." -you