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> - Why does stealing $7 three times get someone a life sentence, but stealing $7MM once get zero jail time? It doesn't--stealing $7 isn't a felony, and no three-strikes state predicates a life sentence on three non-felonies. But to address your general point: there are two different kinds of things. Criminal law isn't just about the effect, but the culpability of the offender. Is the offender a "bad person?" How bad is she? The outcome of killing a person can be anything from no crime at all to murder depending on the mental state of the person who did it--accidentally, recklessly, or intentionally. "Stealing" is easy to prove and easy to understand as something intrinsically wrong, so we draw a harsh, bright-line rule against it. Financial "fraud," however, is much more complicated. With fraud, the actual transfer of money is voluntary. The crime instead relates to the circumstances surrounding the transfer. What representations were made, etc.? In this case, the $7 million was "excess fees." What exactly is "excess fees" and why are they such a clear violation of social norms that the person belongs in prison? That's why we have civil actions. Civil actions address a broad range of conduct that we want to discourage, but which isn't so obviously intrinsically immoral that we want to send people to jail over it (even when they involve lot of money). As folks correctly point out below, the underlying conduct could support criminal prosecutions, which may still come. But the SEC's civil suit serves a different function. |
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stealing-one-slice-of-pi...