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by vanderZwan 2928 days ago
> Fortunately or unfortunately, "encouraged shady behavior" does not directly equate to "illegal".

If an expert tells you to break the law and insists it's fine, and you don't really know how all of this works, I don't think we can still call that merely "encouraging shady behavior".
1 comments
mdorazio 2928 days ago
I'm pretty sure we can and do exactly that all the time. Case law established a very long time ago that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for illegal activity. The burden of crime is always on the person committing the crime, not the person inciting it, expert or not (there's a small exception here for entrapment, but that's completely separate from this situation).

I could be wrong here, so if you or anyone else with more legal background than I have can point to specific prosecutions related to this kind of situation I'd love to read more.

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ggg9990 2928 days ago
“Inciting” is exactly the name given to the crime of inducing someone else to commit a crime.
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mdorazio 2928 days ago
No, that's only for inciting physical violence (against a person or property) in conjunction with a felony. It would not apply to anything from the mortgage bubble. Unless you've got a specific law to reference?
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