I was watching a re-run of American Greed, a TV show about real life frauds and pyramid schemes. As I watched the episode, I was reminded of something I came upon during my research for my novel, the Big Squeeze. Most of the senior executives of Mortgage, financial, and legal system were never indicted or sentenced to jail time, except one very interesting exception, Lee Farkas of TB&W.

Lee Farkas was one of the richest openly gay CEO's, if not the richest gay executive, in the 2000's. His wealth was based on fraud.

Now before anyone jumps on me for asking the obvious question in my subject line, let me start off with my personal take on the guy, I think he's scum and an arrogant asshole, who manipulated other people's money, lives, and everything else to his advantage. He deserves his prison sentence if not more.

With that understood, why didn't other executives like Angelo Mozillo of Countrywide see jail time for reckless oversight and fraudulent actions performed by their company and themselves? (Heck the guy sold large amounts his shares in Countrywide as the market began tanking, Martha Stewart went to jail for less)

Angelo Mozillo also had "friends" in Washington, but not all the mortgage power brokers had that. New Century Financial as another example, executive like Brad Morrice were not held accountable for more than a light fine from the SEC and 5 years off the job in any major corporation (Sec prohibition term ends this year by the way).

Just a thought