{"id":191187,"date":"2009-09-14T05:35:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-14T10:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/14\/warning-to-whistleblowers-if-you-turn-in-big-fish-we-will-destroy-you\/"},"modified":"2009-09-14T05:35:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-14T10:35:00","slug":"warning-to-whistleblowers-if-you-turn-in-big-fish-we-will-destroy-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/14\/warning-to-whistleblowers-if-you-turn-in-big-fish-we-will-destroy-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Warning To Whistleblowers: If You Turn in Big Fish, We Will Destroy You"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bradley Berkenfeld was the man who turned informant to reveal that Swiss Bank UBS was actively aiding and abetting fraudulent schemes to evade taxes.<\/p>\n

He has now been sentenced to 40 months in a Federal prison<\/a>, while folks like Igor Olenicoff, who hid hundreds of millions of dollars from the IRS are getting probation:<\/p>\n

Birkenfeld got slammed because, for all the good he did, he didn\u2019t tell on himself. So prosecutors sought a 30-month prison term for him, and a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, ratcheted it up to 40 months at sentencing last week.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse, that notorious trio of government parasites, there is nothing like an insider.<\/p>\n

That is why Congress has for years passed laws encouraging whistleblowers by offering job protection to government employees and a cut of any funds recovered because of their informing.<\/p>\n

The Birkenfeld sentence stands as an insult to any claim that the government wants whistleblowers to step up. Fear of retaliation and career suicide make it hard enough to rat on your boss. Now you can add the possibility of prison time as payment for your effort.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Prosecutors better hope that Birkenfeld\u2019s tips will last them a very long time. They shouldn\u2019t expect more whistleblowers to show up any time soon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The author of this article, Ann Woolner misses the point: This is not a bug, it’s a feature<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors and judges have a long history of going after white collar whistle-blowers with jail time because<\/span> they don’t want people to rat out rich people, who after all, are not like you and me, and should not be subject to the rule of law.<\/p>\n

In eulogizing Dominick Dunne, Daily Beast<\/span> correspondent Allan Dodds Frank sheds some light on this attitude<\/a>:<\/p>\n

He [Dunne]<\/span> had a view that nonviolent crimes committed by the upper class were understandable, defensible, and often just part of what they do<\/span>. Martha and Al were getting raw deals, he felt. In fact, white-collar crime was so commonplace and garden variety that he had no desire to cover the great corporate crooks of the era who had so little class.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n

Not enough bullets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bradley Berkenfeld was the man who turned informant to reveal that Swiss Bank UBS was actively aiding and abetting fraudulent schemes to evade taxes. He has now been sentenced to 40 months in a Federal prison, while folks like Igor Olenicoff, who hid hundreds of millions of dollars from the IRS are getting probation: Birkenfeld …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,1004,972],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-finance","category-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}