For a deep drive, read The Chickenshit Club:

https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute...

Nothing will happen. Nothing ever does with the Chickenshit Club [0]. In my opinion the entire family should be publicly hanged for their egregious crimes. Something like that would at least be burned into other's minds and hopefully influence them for the better. At the very least, it'd be a brief moment of catharsis and reckoning for those who had problems struggling with opiate addictions.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute...

> There is the perception that criminals are not being punished

The "perception" is that criminals with power, wealth, and connections aren't being punished, and that's because they aren't. After Enron our justice department lost whatever appetite it had for meaningful criminal prosecution of corporate execs, there's even a book about it:

https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute...

People who get put away for white collar crimes are punished because they stole from someone wealthier or more powerful than them. Hardly anything is systematically being done about "white collar" crimes affecting ordinary disempowered people, which is why millions of workers in the U.S. experience wage theft each year.

This book https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute... has lots of proof.

It seems the Chickenshit club[0] has expanded to Europe.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute...

This is a guess, but maybe because CEOs are just trying to stall until they can secure a previously agreed upon exit package? Since prosecuting CEOs is so rare these days (here is a great book on that subject https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute...) it is in their best interest to just deny to avoid culpability.

This is a worthwhile book that might help clear up some of your bewilderment at why corporate crime cases so often turn out so unsatisfactorily.

https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute...

My personal TL;DR from a couple of years ago if you don't have the time to read the book:

- It's very hard for prosecutors to secure a criminal conviction even in the most blatant cases of wrongdoing.

- Prosecutors care too much about their win rate to risk trials.

- Prosecutors have fallen into a trap where they're so dependent on the policy of offering generous non-prosecution or deferred-prosecution agreements if the company comes forward and volunteers evidence, they've become incapable of actually executing on a complex criminal investigation anymore.

- There's intense political pressure to not punish shareholders for management's misdeeds.

Matt,

I have really enjoyed your books and all your articles over the years, especially about banking, corruption, and the financial crisis. i am curious if you have read the book 'The Chickenship Club) [https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute...] and your thoughts on it?

> It's amazing the effect a CEO locked in a cage for a few years like an animal has on the population of CEOs as a whole. Treat digital infrastructure like we treat real infrastructure. If people built bridges the way we build software infrastructure, rafts of executives would be rotting in prison.

Never going to happen. Especially in the current 'business friendly' administration. This [1] book does a great job at explaining why. I don't think we'll see a CEO behind bars for anything white-collar in our generation. Sadly. Judges and prosecutors are political animals too, you know.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute...

For those interested in learning about the United States government moving from prosecuting white-collar criminals to settling, the difference between the SEC and Justice Department misses the point.

The book The Chickenshit Club https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute... by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist tells a more thorough and comprehensive, though infuriating and tragic, story.

> Causing financial crisis wasn't illegal. Unethical but not a crime. Except for some cases of misselling products, banks playing against the customer etc.

The exception there swallows the rule. Prosecutors could have, and in previous financial crises did, prosecute top executives under the laws against, for example, wire fraud.

They didn't this time for reasons outlined in the excellent book: Chickenshit Club (https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute...)

Many reasonable people seem to believe that the backlash and horror inm response to the US government killing of Arthur Andersen and the subsequent job losses were what led to the later toothless reactions by the DoJ to subsequent corporate scandals:

http://www.npr.org/2017/07/11/536642560/is-the-justice-depar...

http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/slate_money/2017/07/t...

https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Justice-Department-C...

There is a good book on this subject that just came out: The Chickenshit Club by Jesse Eisinger (https://www.amazon.ca/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute-...). It's about the culture inside the SEC and Justice Department and their motivations over the last thirty or so years.

it blows my mind that basically any financial crime committed by a big shop results in a fine (and more regulation/compliance) instead of jail time for the bad actors.

of course, if the crime is committed by a penny ante fraudster, then the DOJ is not afraid to put them in jail.

https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Justice-Department-C...

Yes, but even when the Dems were running DOJ, they did not go after corporate executives.

new book on this by Pro Publica reporter:

https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Justice-Department-C...