Sunday, March 6, 2011

Woman Steals $11.00 Goes to Prison! OBAMA'S BANKSTER DONORS STEAL 11 TRILLION - GET BONUSES AND NO PRISON! THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT

AMERICA… where justice is as squalid as the politicians!




*

By BOB HERBERT

Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi has to decide whether to show mercy to two sisters, Jamie and Gladys Scott, who are each serving double consecutive life sentences in state prison for a robbery in which no one was injured and only $11 was taken.

*

"But $25 million of Mozilo's restitution will come from an escrow fund the company set up to cover shareholder litigation and Mozilo has no obligation to pay the remaining amount, according to the settlement agreement.



The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank, through its Countrywide subsidiary, will pay that $20 million, according to a person familiar with the matter who wasn't authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity"



I don't know about you but this hardly sounds like Angelo Mozilo and his cohorts is being punished at all. He blew this off. He didn't even bother to show up in court for this. I guess he really learned his lesson! What a great deterent that is for future frauders..





*



Steal $11 and go to prison forever, that is if you’re not an Obama donor bankster!



THE RAPE AND PILLAGE, still on going, OF THE BANKSTERS has cost this nation $4.7 TRILLION. Enough to have paid off half the mortgages in the nation!



AND NOT ONE BANKSTER WENT TO PRISON! In fact, they’re collecting $144 BILLION in bonuses, and making massive profits as usual!



It’s pays to own Obama!

**

WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?

Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).

*

“Obama's rhetoric covered the whole financial industry, but the key changes will affect only a few high-profile players, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., while sparing investment banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc.”

*

Lou Dobbs Tonight

Thursday, July 9, 2009

And Harvard economics professor JEFFREY MIRON will weigh in on the state of the U.S. economy—and why the only plausible argument for bailing out banks crumbles on close examination.

*

"There is a populist and conservative revolt against Wall Street and financial elites, Congress and government," Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg warned in an analysis this week. "Democrats and President Obama are seen as more interested in bailing out Wall Street than helping Main Street."





*



The Mississippi Pardons

By BOB HERBERT

Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi has to decide whether to show mercy to two sisters, Jamie and Gladys Scott, who are each serving double consecutive life sentences in state prison for a robbery in which no one was injured and only $11 was taken.

This should be an easy call for a law-and-order governor who has, nevertheless, displayed a willingness to set free individuals convicted of far more serious crimes. Mr. Barbour has already pardoned four killers and suspended the life sentence of a fifth.

The Scott sisters have been in prison for 16 years. Jamie, now 38, is seriously ill. Both of her kidneys have failed. Keeping the two of them locked up any longer is unconscionable, grotesquely inhumane.

The sisters were accused of luring two men to a spot outside the rural town of Forest, Miss., in 1993, where the men were robbed by three teenagers, one of whom had a shotgun. The Scott sisters knew the teens. The evidence of the sisters’ involvement has always been ambiguous, at best. The teenagers pleaded guilty to the crime, served two years in prison and were released. All were obliged by the authorities, as part of their plea deals, to implicate the sisters.

No explanation has ever emerged as to why Jamie and Gladys Scott were treated so severely.

In contrast, Governor Barbour has been quite willing to hand get-out-of-jail-free cards to men who unquestionably committed shockingly brutal crimes. The Jackson Free Press, an alternative weekly, and Slate Magazine have catalogued these interventions by Mr. Barbour. Some Mississippi observers have characterized the governor’s moves as acts of mercy; others have called them dangerous abuses of executive power.

The Mississippi Department of Corrections confirmed Governor Barbour’s role in the five cases, noting that the specific orders were signed July 16, 2008:

• Bobby Hays Clark was pardoned by the governor. He was serving a long sentence for manslaughter and aggravated assault, having shot and killed a former girlfriend and badly beaten her boyfriend.

• Michael David Graham had his life sentence for murder suspended by Governor Barbour. Graham had stalked his ex-wife, Adrienne Klasky, for years before shooting her to death as she waited for a traffic light in downtown Pascagoula.

• Clarence Jones was pardoned by the governor. He had murdered his former girlfriend in 1992, stabbing her 22 times. He had already had his life sentence suspended by a previous governor, Ronnie Musgrove.

• Paul Joseph Warnock was pardoned by Governor Barbour. He was serving life for the murder of his girlfriend in 1989. According to Slate, Warnock shot his girlfriend in the back of the head while she was sleeping.

• William James Kimble was pardoned by Governor Barbour. He was serving life for the murder and robbery of an elderly man in 1991.

Radley Balko, in an article for Slate, noted that none of the five men were given relief because of concerns that they had been unfairly treated by the criminal justice system. There were no questions about their guilt or the fairness of the proceedings against them. But they did have one thing in common. All, as Mr. Balko pointed out, had been enrolled in a special prison program “that had them doing odd jobs around the Mississippi governor’s mansion.”

The idea that those men could be freed from prison and allowed to pursue whatever kind of lives they might wish while the Scott sisters are kept locked up, presumably for the rest of their lives, is beyond disturbing.

Supporters of the Scott sisters, including their attorney, Chokwe Lumumba, and Ben Jealous of the N.A.A.C.P., have asked Governor Barbour to intervene, to use his executive power to free the women from prison.

A spokeswoman for the governor told me he has referred the matter to the state’s parole board. Under Mississippi law, the governor does not have to follow the recommendation of the board. He is free to act on his own. With Jamie Scott seriously ill (her sister and others have offered to donate a kidney for a transplant), the governor should move with dispatch.

The women’s mother, Evelyn Rasco, told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss.: “I wish they would just hurry up and let them out. I hope that is where it is leading to. That would be the only justified thing to do.”

An affidavit submitted to the governor on behalf of the Scott sisters says: “Jamie and Gladys Scott respectfully pray that they each be granted a pardon or clemency of their sentences on the grounds that their sentences were too severe and they have been incarcerated for too long. If not released, Jamie Scott will probably die in prison.”

As they are both serving double life sentences, a refusal by the governor to intervene will most likely mean that both will die in prison.

&

Countrywide CEO Mozilo settles with SEC for $67.5M

By JACOB ADELMAN

Associated Press Writer

Countrywide Financial Corp. co-founder Angelo Mozilo has agreed to a $67.5 million settlement to avoid trial on civil fraud and insider trading charges that alleged he profited from doling out risky mortgages while misleading investors about the risks.

Two other former Countrywide executives also settled before trial next week on charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But employment agreements that protect the men from lawsuits involving the failed lender mean Bank of America Corp., which bought Countrywide in July 2008, will pick up most of the tab.

The settlement announced Friday spares the executives the risk of a verdict that could have been used against them in lawsuits by shareholders, or by prosecutors if a criminal probe into their activities leads to charges.

It also gives the SEC the right to brag about what it said is the biggest financial penalty ever against a public company's senior executive. The agency has been criticized for doing little to prevent much of the risky behavior that led to the financial meltdown and for failing to detect Bernard Madoff's massive investment fraud.

"This settlement is a desirable result for all the parties," said Jacob Frenkel, a former SEC enforcement attorney now in private practice. "The SEC claims victory. The defendants get closure while preserving their ability to fight" lawsuits by shareholders.

The agreement requires Mozilo to repay $45 million in ill-gotten profits and $22.5 million in civil penalties. Former Countrywide President David Sambol owes $5 million in profits and $520,000 in civil penalties, and former Chief Financial Officer Eric P. Sieracki will pay $130,000 in civil penalties.

It's "the fitting outcome for a corporate executive who deliberately disregarded his duty to investors by hiding what he saw in the executive suite," SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a conference call with reporters.

But $25 million of Mozilo's restitution will come from an escrow fund the company set up to cover shareholder litigation and Mozilo has no obligation to pay the remaining amount, according to the settlement agreement.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank, through its Countrywide subsidiary, will pay that $20 million, according to a person familiar with the matter who wasn't authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Sambol's agreement stipulates that his entire $5 million forfeiture will come from the escrow fund.

The payments come on top of an $8.4 billion settlement Bank of America made with 12 states in 2008 over Countrywide's lending practices. The company also agreed in August to pay $600 million to end a class-action case from former Countrywide shareholders.

The penalty represents a striking turn for Mozilo, the son of a Bronx butcher who 41 years ago co-founded what grew into the nation's largest home loan originator. In 2006, Countrywide was writing one in six of the nation's mortgages, totaling more than $490 billion, court records showed.

The Calabasas, Calif.-based company spiraled into disaster as investors suddenly realized many homeowners wouldn't be able to repay mortgages that required no proof of income or down payment, and offered adjustable rates that quickly made monthly payments unaffordable.

Regulators portrayed Countrywide's massive size in court documents as the result of the three executives' single-minded pursuit of market dominance, even if it meant taking disastrous risks.

"The credit losses experienced by Countrywide in 2007 not only were foreseeable by the proposed defendants, they were in fact foreseen at least as early as September 2004," the SEC said in its filing.

The SEC accused the men of misleading shareholders about the quality of the loans on Countrywide's books. The civil complaint also accused Mozilo of acting on his inside knowledge of the company's precarious state when he sold shares between November 2006 and October 2007 ahead of its collapse, reaping more than $139 million.

Under the settlement, the three men did not admit wrongdoing.

"Mr. Sambol has agreed to settle the SEC lawsuit and put the matter behind him for the benefit of his family and loved ones," Sambol's attorney Walter Brown said in a statement.

Sieracki's lawyer, Shirli Fabbri Weiss, said in a news release that all fraud-based claims against her client had been dropped and that his civil penalty was to settle negligence-based charges.

Mozilo, who was not in court when the settlement was announced, was the nation's highest-profile defendant yet to face trial for risky business practices leading to the housing collapse that sent the country into recession.

The SEC wanted to "put his head on a pike and parade it around," said Anthony Sabino, professor of law and business at St. John's University in New York.

Under the settlement, Mozilo agreed to never again serve as an officer or director of a publicly traded company. Sambol agreed not to do so for three years.

Mozilo lawyer David Siegel did not return a message seeking comment.

The settlement talks involving Mozilo were first reported by the Wall Street Journal after U.S. District Judge John F. Walter filed a notice Thursday for trial lawyers to attend a status conference Friday.

Countrywide's lending practices are reportedly also the subject of a criminal probe in Los Angeles. Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, declined to comment about the situation.

---



No comments: