The list of financial swindlers who eventually got away with it without punishment (or very little punishment) is very short. I have found 2 guys who classify. If you know of others, please post them. They have to be white collar criminals and live a good life after exposure with minimal or no punishment. Here is one guy, who went on the run after the SEC brought charges against him. He successfully avoided US persecution and his eventual downfall came from unrelated crimes and from the mistake of messing with the Castro brothers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Vesco "In February 1973, with criminal charges against him imminent, Vesco took the corporate jet and fled to Costa Rica along with about $200 million worth of IOS's investments, according to SEC allegations. In Costa Rica, Vesco donated $2.1 million to Sociedad Agricola Industrial San Cristobal, S.A., a company founded by President Jose Figueres. Figueres passed a law to guarantee that Vesco would not be extradited. In 1978 Vesco moved first to Nassau and then to Antigua. While in Antigua he tried unsuccessfully to buy the sister island Barbuda and establish it as a sovereign state. He lived in Nicaragua for a while, while the Sandinista Government was in power. Each of these countries accepted him, hoping that his great wealth would finance local development projects. However, this worked poorly for everybody involved, although Vesco was reputed to have stolen over $200 million, and appeared several times on the Forbes list of the wealthiest people in the world. .... Vesco attempted to defraud Nixon and Raul Castro, and Cuban authorities seized control of the project and arrested Vesco and his wife. Vesco reportedly died of lung cancer in November 2007 and was buried at Colon Cemetery in Havana. " ----------------------------------------------- The other guy also related to the same fiasco although spent 11 months in a Swiss jail but later was acquited of the charges: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Cornfeld "... a prominent businessman and international financier who sold investments in US mutual funds, and was tried and acquitted for orchestrating one of the most lucrative confidence games of his era. Cornfeld owned a 12th century chateau in Geneva, villa in France, a house in [West Halkin Street]Belgravia, London, and a mansion Grayhall, Carolyn Way, Beverly Hills, as well as a permanent suite in a New York City hotel and his own fleet of private planes. He is quoted as saying, "I had mansions all over the world, I threw extravagant parties. And I lived with ten or twelve girls at a time." He had romances with Victoria Principal; Heidi Fleiss; Alana Hamilton (née Collins - a model and former spouse of George Hamilton who subsequently married Rod Stewart); and Princess Ira of Fürstenberg. Bernard Cornfeld suffered a stroke and died of a cerebral aneurysm on February 27, 1995 in London, England..."
If they got away with it how come they are both dead. I guess there is justice in this world after all. What are you going to do, eat your money when you are dying. Well, you can, but its not going to help you. Q: Why is this thread in educational resources, are we to learn from these guys, cos I hope not.
"]The list of financial swindlers who eventually got away with it without punishment (or very little punishment) is very short. " mwhahaha! Try everyone working on wall street! they all got huge bonuses for creating, selling and buying CDS/CDO's. Then they got exposed for the scum they are. Then they get bailed out by government so they can make even MORE bonus $!.You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried. And lets not forget the accountants who got paid huge to help Enron and banks etc work their off-balance sheet magic. The list of corrupt individuals who haven't got away with it would be a much shorter list. Don't even get me started on the whole full service broker racket.
Angelo Mozilo made something like 140M in the Countrywide fiasco, SEC fines him 64M, he keeps the rest. I'd say that's getting away with it.