A jury in Denver found former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio guilty on 19 of 42 counts of insider trading. He faces 10 years and a million dollar fine on each count – which could essentially put him behind bars for rest of his life. He joins the ranks of other convicted Broadbandits including Bernie Ebbers, the founder and CEO of WorldCom.
The term ‘convicted felon Joe Nacchio’ has a very nice ring to it,” said Colorado U.S. Attorney Troy Eid outside the courthouse following the verdict. “Make no mistake my friends, this is an overwhelming determination of guilt.”
I wrote about Joe for Red Herring. He came across as anything but a criminal. Naive of me, I guess. I will follow up with a full length post later!
via Bloomberg.
Score one for the good guys. Now, when is somebody from Nortel going to jail? Their shenanigans cost investors (a lot of them Nortel’s own employees) tens of billions.
Jesse,
that would be score two – given that bernie is behind the bars already.
On Nortel,
I wonder if it was the crime of same magnitude or crime of stupidity
Living under the umbrella of Qwest technology – the follow-on to US Worst – I shout “Bravo!”
The state of New Mexico just won a case for a rebate to customers for the most recent years of theft by these klowns.
Maybe so, but Naccio/Qwest were the one telco that demanded that the US Government get a court order for tapping lines and following call patterns. I wonder if any of this was payback. Insider trading can be gratuitous, or it can be accidental in many many many cases (I don’t know the details of this case).
Om, I’m talking about the score from this at bat, not the whole inning. As to Nortel, stupidity is rarely a valid legal defense. [Insert Alberto Gonzales Joke Here] Of course, Nortel criminality is primarily an issue for the Canadian courts. For all their general smugness, they seem no more enlightened than us when it comes to major league white collar crime.