Crime actually does pay reasonably well
Just finished listening to Conspiracy of Fools, a fantastic book about Enron, while driving back and forth to various airports. One interesting item from the book is that it lays out exactly how much white collar crime pays. Andrew Fastow and Michael Copper looted from Enron’s shareholders in ways that attracted the ire of the Justice Department. Fastow earned something like $100 million from his Enron salary and, mostly, the off-books partnerships that he created to enrich himself while helping the Harvard Business School and McKinsey crowd produce the quarterly numbers that they wanted to show the public. As part of a plea bargain with the Federales, Fastow had to refund about $20 million of his illegal profits and serve up to 10 years in prison. Copper is in a similar boat, having to refund a small percentage of the tens of $millions that he obtained illegally. So it would seem that crime pays roughly $8 million per year spent at Club Fed.
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