The Penalties Are Not as Long as They Used to Be

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Every single one of them all the way down cut plea deals. Ken Rice, who led broadband, did the plea deal, got a 27 month sentence. Rex Shelby was charged with fraud, conspiracy, money laundering. It feels weird to sort of judge whether a criminal penalty is harsh or not. Like acquired doesn't quite feel like the right forum for that because I'm not well and we are also not lawyers.

The FTX fraud has dominated headlines now for weeks, during which we’ve debated if and how Acquired could uniquely add to the conversation. Then we realized there was an angle so perfect that we had to drop everything and enter Acquired research overdrive: Enron. Travel back with us to the granddaddy fraud of them all, 2001’s then-largest bankruptcy in US history and the impetus for the famous Sarbanes-Oxley Act. So much of Enron’s history parallels FTX that the uncanniness is almost unbelievable — right down to the same CEO running the two bankruptcies. Sit back and enjoy this crazy tale of villainy, greed, and the nature of humans and money. Maybe just don’t take notes on this one…

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