A fine of just $300

[Ichingcarpenter]

A former Bank of America senior vice president who conspired to rig municipal bond bids will not face prison time, despite pleading guilty.

Douglas Campbell escaped a possible 35-year jail sentence because he cooperated with prosecutors, investigating bid rigging in the municipal bond market which is worth $3.7tn (£2.2tn, €2.7tn).

He pleaded guilty in 2010 to three counts of wire fraud, conspiracy, and conspiracy to retain trade.

Campbell received a fine of just $300 and no further penalty.

US District Judge Kimba Wood said that the former Bank of America employee deserved clemency for his cooperation with federal investigators for almost a decade.

Campbell's lawyer, Walter Mack, said in a letter to the judge: "I have never represented a cooperating defendant who has given so much for so long at such cost to himself and his family."


http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/former-bank-america-senior-vp-guilty-bond-bid-rigging-escapes-jail-1445692

[frylock]

1. he was just so, so giving..

yeah, fuck this shit.

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. For the rest of the story

West Virginia was just one stop in a nationwide conspiracy in which financial advisers to municipalities colluded with Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Wachovia Corp. and 11 other banks.

They rigged bids on auctions for so-called guaranteed investment contracts, known as GICs, according to a Justice Department list that was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on March 24 and then put under seal. Those contracts hold tens of billions of taxpayer dollars


The workings of the conspiracy -- which stretched from California to Pennsylvania and included more than 200 deals involving about 160 state agencies, local governments and non- profits -- can be pieced together from the Justice Department’s indictment of CDR, civil lawsuits by governments around the country, e-mails obtained by Bloomberg News and interviews with current and former bankers and public officials.


snip


Court records in the broadest-ever criminal investigation of public finance shed new light on how Wall Street’s biggest banks were cheating cities and towns during the same decade in which they were setting the stage for a global economic collapse.

As the banks were steering the world’s financial system to the brink of catastrophe by loading more than $1 trillion of subprime mortgage loans into opaque debt investments, they were also duping public officials across the U.S.


snip


Amnesty Agreement

In exchange, the government promised in an amnesty agreement not to prosecute the bank. Bank of America spokeswoman Shirley Norton in San Francisco said in an e-mail the firm is continuing to cooperate.




snip

16 other companies, including units of General Electric Co., UBS AG and FSA, then a unit of Brussels lender Dexia SA, are also cited as co-conspirators by the Justice Department, according to the list under seal. None have been charged in the case.


snip.........incredible isn't it? Trillions of dollars causing the crash and this is the shit that happens.l

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-05-18/conspiracy-of-banks-rigging-state-finance-converged-with-mortgage-meltdown.html

[Enthusiast]

22. "None have been charged in the case."

[DiverDave]

36. NONE?? then wtf was his "help"??

Scam, letting this bastich off.
Justice is for the rich.

[Blue_Tires]

2. It feels dirty, but

if this guy made a deal and rolled over on some bigger fish in the pond, I don't have that much of a problem with it...

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. Read the amnesty agreement

DOJ did with the bank.

[Blue_Tires]

10. yeah, that's ugly

And I see three of the 'big fish' he testified against only got a fraction of the sentence they should have:

Gary Heinz, 40, a former bank vice president who was caught on recordings discussing the scheme, received the longest prison sentence, a term of 27 months. Judge Kimba M. Wood of Federal District Court in Manhattan also ordered Mr. Heinz to pay a $400,000 fine.

Peter Ghavami, 45, who left UBS in 2007 as global head of commodities, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $1 million. Michael Welty, 49, a former vice president, was sentenced to 16 months and ordered to pay a $300,000 fine.

Prosecutors had sought sentences of at least 19 and a half years for Mr. Heinz, at least 17 and a half years for Mr. Ghavami and at least 11 years and three months for Mr. Welty.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/business/3-former-ubs-bankers-sentenced-for-bid-rigging.html?_r=0

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. Community service for one of the worst.

In October, CDR was charged with criminal conspiracy and fraud, along with Chief Executive Officer David Rubin, 48, vice president Evan Zarefsky and Wolmark. They pleaded not guilty. Rubin, who was also charged with making fraudulent bank transactions, faces as much as $3 million in fines and more than 30 years in jail if convicted.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-05-18/conspiracy-of-banks-rigging-state-finance-converged-with-mortgage-meltdown.html


Ex-CDR Chief Rubin Spared Prison in Muni Bid-Rigging Case


CDR Financial Products Inc. founder David Rubin was spared prison for his role in a municipal bond bid-rigging scheme that involved employees of some of the world’s biggest financial institutions.

Rubin, 52, was sentenced to two years’ probation and 500 hours of community service today by U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan. The judge also ordered Rubin and CDR to pay $3.5 million in fines. Because CDR is defunct, Rubin must guarantee his former firm’s $2 million share.

Rubin, who must also make as much as $2.1 million in restitution, pleaded guilty on behalf of himself and his Beverly Hills, California-based firm in 2011, admitting he took kickbacks for running sham auctions for investments. He was charged in a federal probe of bid and auction rigging in the municipal bond market.

A prison sentence would be “a terrible injustice,” Wood said at a hearing today, citing Rubin’s guilty plea and cooperation with authorities, as well as his philanthropy and his wife’s terminal cancer.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-12/ex-cdr-chief-rubin-spared-prison-in-muni-bid-rigging-case.html

[catnhatnh]

12. How come....

Black folk get sentenced by the year and white folk by the month???

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

18. Black and white or gold and green?

The golden rule: Those that have the gold (or green) make the rules.

Those with the gold and green are almost exclusively white, so they get the slaps on the wrist from a system designed to protect the wealthy.

[noiretextatique]

47. that and...criminalizing black people is profitable and popular

It is a tradition in Amerikka.

[catchnrelease]

19. +1,000,000 n/t

[bvar22]

7. Oh Yes.

So many in Upper Management at Bank of America are now under indictment or sitting in Jail cells because of
his "cooperation".
.
.
.
Oh Wait.
No they aren't.


My Prediction:
This is the end of the story.

[Enthusiast]

23. +1

You wouldn't want upper management sitting in jails with regular people. Would you?

[bvar22]

39. John Edwards, warts and all, was certainly right about the "Two Americas".

One [font size=4]AMERICA[/font] for The RICH,
and one [font size=1 color=gray]america[/font] for all the rest of us.

[Enthusiast]

40. I hope we can change that.

[JHB]

3. I take it Mr. Mack usually represents murderers?

He seems to have a low bar on the quality of his clients, if this guy is a Parton among them.

[Jesus Malverde]

4. wow wow wow...

Classic from #MyNYPD

[TRoN33]

8. It's not even a slap on wrist, instead...

Judge are sucking this banker's jewels down there.

[OnyxCollie]

9. That's going to end up on his permanent record.

Good luck trying to get a job with that rap.

[mindwalker_i]

16. What are you talking about?

It'll probably HELP him get a job.

[OnyxCollie]

21. It was sarcasm. nt

[mindwalker_i]

43. Oops, sorry

Am slow today.

[tclambert]

13. Collateral consequences! Collateral consequences!

If you make financial criminals pay for their crimes, it might hurt their business, which might cost some innocent employees their jobs. And then they'd have to move to the bank that picks up the additional business, so there's not really any net change in jobs or amount of business overall. But collateral consequences means bankers never have to say they're sorry.

Jeez, if you put bankers in jail, people might get the idea that no one is above the law. Then even billionaires and former Presidents of the United States might face justice. If you prosecute financial crimes, why pretty soon you'd end up prosecuting war crimes. Can't have that.

[closeupready]

14. Gangsters, take note.

[Fla Dem]

15. Judge Kimba Woods was a Clinton nominee for attorney General

I knew the name was sounded familiar.


"In the Nannygate matter of 1993, Wood was Bill Clinton's second unsuccessful choice for United States Attorney General.[8] Like Clinton's previous nominee, Zoë Baird, Wood had hired an illegal alien as a nanny; although, unlike Baird, she had paid the required taxes on the employee and had broken no laws. Wood employed the undocumented immigrant at a time when it was legal to do so, before enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made hiring of undocumented workers unlawful.[9] The threat of a repetition of the same controversy quickly led to a withdrawal of Wood from consideration."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimba_Wood

The decision is a travesty nonetheless. These banksters have to be sent to prison.

[msanthrope]

24. Who gave Miliken a pretty stiff sentence. nt

[Ichingcarpenter]

26. Bull shit ..... Wood reduced his sentence by years.

A Federal judge in Manhattan reduced Michael R. Milken's prison sentence yesterday so that he will have to serve only two years in prison, meaning he will be released in seven months.





The Securities and Exchange Commission, on the other hand, had told Judge Wood that Mr. Milken's efforts were of no "concrete" value. And other legal opinion about the sentence reduction was mixed.





http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/06/business/milken-s-sentence-reduced-by-judge-7-months-are-left.html

[msanthrope]

30. Sure--after SDNY prosecutors asked her to because he co-operated with them. The SEC wasn't happy,

Justice was.

[Ichingcarpenter]

31. Under President Bush.... justice

but hey its all the same to you.

[msanthrope]

33. Are you trying to insult me? You don't seem very coherent. nt

[bobthedrummer]

41. I've been reading this thread and came to this-I'll insult ya msanthrope-consider it done fool. n/t

[msanthrope]

42. One wishes for more erudite detractors. nt

[Ichingcarpenter]

29. Appointed by Reagan and married to a wall street financier.

On December 18, 1987, based upon a recommendation from Senator Al D'Amato,[3] Wood was nominated by President Ronald Reagan

Wood is currently married to Wall Street financier and former Harvard Law School classmate Frank E. Richardson III,

[DeSwiss]

17. Good thing it was a Democratic judge.

- Can you imagine how easily he might have gotten off if a Republican had been presiding?

K&R

[Hoppy]

20. Aw, poor baby. He gave so much.

Way to go, Holder. You da' Man.

[indepat]

25. And just think of the number of people whose lives have been ruined for having smoked a joint:

the blessings of living in a right-wing-controlled society are so evident.

[TBF]

27. She's a smart judge -

dealt with her court in the 90s. I'm guessing there was some "advice" given from Holder here ....

[DeSwiss]

38. Advice?

I think giving ''advice'' to a judge might be a little questionable if not worse. A recommendation from the prosecution is proper under the legal system, as long as it can be scrutinized at some level. Future potential prosecutions and/or national security claims, notwithstanding.

- Unless it was financial advice, at least then it would make sense. And these days, it would also be SOP.

[TBF]

44. That or the guy really gave them every single thing

they needed. I could see that happening.

[Rex]

46. Mafia high stakes players do it to each other all the time for the FBI.

Don't see why just because this is another type of crime, someone wouldn't be willing to role over 100%. Still, just not right that you can 'mass mug' people and get off almost free of charge.

I bet he gave the feds everything they wanted and more.

[MADem]

28. He musta sung like a damn canary, then!!! nt

[Ichingcarpenter]

32. Community service was the other penality

she gave to the other bankster that was looking a 30 years too.

[msanthrope]

34. For a decade, apparently. nt

[Ichingcarpenter]

35. Nothing happened either on his singing

with a trillion dollar rip off of taxpayers monies.

[Rex]

37. Two set of rules...one for white collar and one for blue collar crime.

You can mug one person and get 20 years. You can 'mug' thousands of people, remotely and get a 300 dollar fine.

Just doesn't seem right.

[TBF]

45. I agree. nt

[progressoid]

48. cost of a couple speeding tickets.