1. Corporations aren't people in every possible sense. Consider most of what you might read random sources say on the internet about corporate personhood to be

1. Corporations aren't people in every possible sense. Consider most of what you might read random sources say on the internet about corporate personhood to be probably nonsense. 2. Shareholders aren't officers (in the general case), so won't have been part of the decision-making or execution processes that led to this fraud (if that's what it is). So my understanding is they can be deemed to have been "unjustly enriched" by it (and so have stuff taken away from them that they shouldn't have) but can't be held personally liable in the sense that they would be jailed. To do that would be grossly unfair. Consider that the biggest shareholders of any major corporation are going to be pension funds and the like. So you've got say the California State Teachers Pension (Picking one at random to be specific). You think they should go to jail because their mandate says they have to track the S&P500 to within some % and so they bought MSFT because it's part of the S&P500?