... but my mind landed on this meaningless thought and I had to figure it out. The feds went after Martha Stewart for securities fraud and got their conviction. She spent five months in prison and five months on house arrest, received probation (two years) and a $30,000 fine. By selling her stocks when she did, she avoided a loss of about $46,000. So you could say – if she in fact did intend to defraud – she "stole" that money from the other shareholders. Kind of a stretch, that. But let's say she did it. She spent nearly one year in some form of incarceration (okay, it probably wasn't too tough to be in that cupcake compound, nor would anyone mind being stuck in her house for five months, but just go along with this for a minute). Her total "theft:" $46,000.
Bernard Madoff just got 150 years for his undisputed swindle of something like $60 billion. People have lost their life savings to him; there have been suicides and utter despair over his thefts: theft as real as if he broke into victims' houses and helped himself to all their possessions. And then cleaned out their bank accounts. 150 years is better than the twelve years his attorneys suggested. Still. If you applied the same formula to him as Martha (one year in prison for every $46,000), he should have been sentenced to 13, 043 years in prison. I think I did the math right. My little calculator couldn't even handle all the zeros; had to go to the big adding machine.
Too bad Madoff wasn't investigated at the same time as Martha, with the same zeal. Apparently he was deep into his criminal activities then, and more than a few people seemed to know about it. Meanwhile, Ms. Stewart seems to have bounced back. Say what you will about her; she still has a brilliant mind for business.
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