S.E.C. Case Stands Out Because It Stands Alone.

[elleng]

At one trading desk sat Fabrice Tourre, a midlevel 28-year-old Frenchman who was little known not just outside Goldman but even inside the firm. That changed three years later, in 2010, when he achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the only individual at Goldman and across Wall Street sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for helping to sell a mortgage-securities investment, in one of the hundreds of mortgage deals created during the bubble years.

How Mr. Tourre alone came to be the face of mortgage-securities fraud has raised questions among former prosecutors and Congressional officials about how aggressive and thorough the government’s investigations have been into Wall Street’s role in the mortgage crisis.

Across the industry, “it’s impossible that only one person was involved with fraudulent activities in connection to the sales of these mortgage securities,” said G. Oliver Koppell, a New York attorney general in the 1990s and now a New York City councilman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/business/01prosecute.html?hp

[Enthusiast]

1. Yeah. How is this possible? nt

[Igel]

2. Simple.

1. Not everything immoral, unethical, or suspicious is illegal.

2. Not everything illegal can be shown to be illegal.


Overkill on (1) leads to very Puritanical types of legal codes, or reversing things so that it's not the case that everything not explicitly banned is permitted but instead everything not explicitly permitted is banned. Overkill on (2) leads to horrible criteria for illegality, where the burden of proof is on the accused to demonstrate lack of intent or showing that their actions were both pure and necessary. This reverses the burden of proof and easily leads to guilty until (self-)proven innocent. It's the difference between the old canard as to whether it's better to let 99 guilty men go free to protect the 1 innocent man or whether it's better to imprison 99 innocent men to make sure we've got the 1 guilty man.

[MedicalAdmin]

3. Regarding wall street.

I get your point of course and agree with it, but I would rather still that an appropriate amount of resources were assigned to hunt down and punish the dudes who knowingly defrauded trillions from millions. The fact that these crooks, torturers, etc walk free makes a mockery of our justice system.

USA JUSTICE: once admire, now snickered at.