According to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Central California - the frontman of a Los Angeles-based rock band has been charged with submitting false documents to banks to fraudulently obtain millions of dollars worth of loans, money that he allegedly used to fund his band and his lavish lifestyle.
According to the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, between August 2009 and April 2011, the frontman obtained four loans from Comerica Bank totaling approximately $6.25 million. He then defaulted on those loans, causing Comerica to suffer losses of approximately $6 million.
Now, I don't know about you, but I'm having a hard time sympathizing with any bankers who may have been taken advantage of by a Moody musician who in his anger may have thought, like the President, that clawing back some of those profits was the best way to hold bankers accountable for the actions that led to America's economic crisis.
If you ask me, it doesn't sound like the bankers in this case conducted appropriate due-diligence, and should hold themselves responsible for their losses. It would also seem to me that a good case could be made based solely upon a judicial double-standard. Why is this singer being criminally-prosecuted when so many bankers who basically did the same thing are only being civilly-prosecuted?
It'll be interesting to see what a jury of his peers decides, and how this case turns out.
Word in the street is that the band's frontman has allegedly put together a formidable defense team to fight the charges. As a matter of fact, someone leaked me this video of their opening argument.
Via Matt Taibbi from The Rolling Stone - This week, we talked about Mary Jo White, the wrist-slapping HSBC and UBS settlements (about which a full Rolling Stone feature is coming, hitting newsstands next week), and the whole question of why some people go to jail and others don't.
ReplyDeleteSource: Why Bankers Don't Go to Jail: Taibbi Visits with Bill Moyers
We are a country of laws, laws that should apply to all of it's citizens equally. Senator Bernie Sanders on Wall Street bankers not only being too big to fail, but being too big to jail.
ReplyDeleteThe SEC settles with big banks involved in the 2008 global financial crash and then brags about it. The Daily Show
ReplyDeleteThe SEC, what a joke. How can anyone take them seriously?
ReplyDeleteThey let Madoff continue his criminal escapades for years after Harry Markopolos provided them with evidence of his massive crimes on multiple occasions. Not to mention all the other serious crime and fraud committed by the financial industry which led to the Great Recession, in which they failed to properly regulate.
So, what type of important enforcement efforts have they been spending time and taxpayer money pursuing in order to "protect" investors? No, nothing involving toxic derivatives created by the revolving doors on Wall Street and the banksters.
They've spent years pursuing a bullshit case against Mark Cuban, who was set-up as the fall guy for a nonsense insider trading scheme. And how did that work out for them?
Billionaire Mark Cuban cleared of insider trading; blasts U.S. government.
I'm going to start referring to our Government as "The Syndicate".
ReplyDelete