I leave my opinion out of it so you dont get hung up on that and skip the story.




Study: White-collar criminals dodging fines

Fri Mar 4, 6:13 AM ET

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By Richard Willing, USA TODAY

White-collar criminals routinely avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in court-ordered restitution by schemes such as transferring assets to relatives, a Government Accountability Office study said Thursday.


The GAO studied five unidentified federal cases in which executives and business owners found guilty of fraud were ordered to pay a total of $568 million to investors and shareholders. Only about $40 million, or 7% of what was owed, was ever collected, the study found.

The report follows a GAO study last year that said uncollected fines and restitution in federal criminal cases more than quadrupled in six years, from $6 billion in September 1996 to about $25 billion by September 2002.

The rise appeared to be driven at least in part by a 1996 law that significantly increased the amount of restitution that courts were required to order for those convicted of fraud, violent felonies or tampering with consumer products.

"Being tough on crime doesn't mean very much if we aren't serious about enforcing court-ordered fines and restitution," said Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record), D-N.D., who had asked GAO to study the issue. "We simply must do better."

The Justice Department (news - web sites) has "financial litigation units" that are responsible for collecting debt from criminals. In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Dorgan accused the Justice Department of not aggressively trying to improve collections. The department did not comment Thursday.

In the cases the GAO examined, it found that white-collar criminals used a variety of tricks to thwart collection. Among them:

• Shifting bank and brokerage accounts to family trusts and foundations. Suspects did so after they were arrested but before they were sentenced.

• Giving a company to a minor child, then joining the company as a salaried employee.

• Transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars to a trust for a minor child, which the criminal effectively controlled.

• Placing a multimillion-dollar residence in a trust.

• Deeding a home to a relative, then renting it back.

Study: Blue-collar criminals dodging fines

Blue-collar criminals routinely avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in court-ordered restitiution by schemes such as spending all the money they stole from others before police caught them...
See, the problem is, you keep trying to spin this as if the big guys are the only ones getting away with this stuff. How many bank robbers, home invaders, and muggers pay back their victims?

And how do you expect to stop all of this that's occurring between the arrest and the sentencing? It's "Innocent until proven guilty" in this country, remember? So are you going to advocate increasing the use of "asset freezing" on people that may turn out to be completely innocent?

I have no problem with attempting to come up with ways to dig this money out once the guy has been convicted. But I also understand that can be difficult, depending on where the money has gone. Much like the mugger who may have bought a used car with his proceeds, do you go back to the guy he bough the car from 2 years earlier and demand the cash back?

See, the problem is, you keep trying to spin this as if the big guys are the only ones getting away with this stuff. How many bank robbers, home invaders, and muggers pay back their victims?

And how do you expect to stop all of this that's occurring between the arrest and the sentencing? It's "Innocent until proven guilty" in this country, remember? So are you going to advocate increasing the use of "asset freezing" on people that may turn out to be completely innocent?

I have no problem with attempting to come up with ways to dig this money out once the guy has been convicted. But I also understand that can be difficult, depending on where the money has gone. Much like the mugger who may have bought a used car with his proceeds, do you go back to the guy he bough the car from 2 years earlier and demand the cash back?

Well, I think that it is scandalous loopholing and the rich can do it because they can pay somebody who knows where the loopholes are to exploit them.

IMO this is EQUALLY as bad as a bank robber and more times than not when a bank robber is caught the money is returned and the man or woman who committed the crime goes to jail for a long time and has no time to launder the money. In these cases they have months if not years to launder/hide the money....do a few years in a resort jail (not the pound you in the ass prison) and come out and reap the rewards.

Im just saying that about a year ago we started this debate when Enron went down and many of you stood/stand on the side of "its a very few companies or CEO's that do this" and ever since then the plane has been in a tialspin. Some more have been "caught", yet the laws (and now the collections) aren't enforced enough, and the CEO's, CFO's, and their accountants get away with fleecing their employees.

IMO, at some point even those of you who stoof on that side back then will have to come around to seeing that those at the top need to be regulated heavily, thoroughly transparentized, and have to know that the laws will be enforced....until then, the gap will continue to grow, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer (see Ameriquest Mortgage company), and the money thatw as supposed to go into your 401k will dissapear into the wallets of those who...maybe dont need it so much


**my opinion didnt stay out of it long ** :)

Let me guess, this isn't a problem in North Korea under communism.

Let me guess, this isn't a problem in North Korea under communism.

cmon, dont jump off the deep end....there is a happy medium and its easily found with an influx of acountability and morals. I love how one of the parties spouts the morals all over the place but then a major contingent of that party shows their underbelly time and again.

Honestly, I believe thats all it owuld take. Some morals and accountability and then everything would be fine. Love thy neighbor type stuff.

N. Korea's government and economy are a wreck...and their human rights record doesnt really speak well for morality...would you agree?

This isnt difficult stuff to debate without having to jump off the deep end. Cmon Dutch..you can do it.

I'd say the government should really pursue the collection of this debt. It seems to me that the government is actually doing so now, it is just that the guilty parties have numerous ways to hide their wealth. You can't get blood from a stone, and you can't collect a debt from someone who has no money. Well at least you can't collect from someone who can certified financials that say they are broke.

It isn't that the governemnt isn't trying to collect, it is that there are too many ways for people to protect their assetts. Those types of things are pretty hard to outlaw, because in some cases the transactions, like giving a business to a relative, are perfectly legitimate transactions.

I have a cousin who is a bit of a shady attorney. He hid money away during his first two divorces so well that once he had to quit being a tax attorney, he made a pretty good living finding assetts that the kinds of guys the article talks about were hiding. The problem was still proving the transactions used to hide the money were actually "fraudulent".

Perhaps, a post transaction "waiting period" or soething wherein if someone is found guilty of a finance related crime would have everything but the homestead susceptable to claims. I dunno, im just thinking.....these aren't good people and they shouldnt be able to get away with it.

It's along the same lines of the fact that the rich usually are able to avoid a lot of taxes because of the flexibility they have with their investments and the hiring of the best accountants to find and take advantage of the loopholes that are there. Oh yeah, you may not have heard, but the super-rich are usually able to afford the best lawyers and get off without being found guilty in the first place.

I hear that life is usually more pleasant once you're rich.

:)