The Enron Gang

Another Enron executive learned his fate today, 5 years and 6 months. I must state here that I am not an unbiased observer in this instance because these guys managed to get into my conservative pockets which is no easy chore. I don't even call it investing, it's saving to me.
The part that I found interesting was this statement made to the Judge that I plucked from the AP story. "There were improper things done at Enron. Some of these things were done by me. For that, I'm sorry, as God be my witness, I never did anything intentionally to enrich myself or hurt the company or it's employees.'' Gee, he brought God into it, he must really mean it, right?
Now I'm sure he thought the Judge had already made up his mind. So what's he after? Is he born again? As usual we will never really know because people like this slip back and forth, in and out of different states of mind and actually delude themselves along with the company and it's employees.
If he had stopped at I'm sorry, I believe I would have had a different take but his mind wouldn't allow it. It was just too difficult to end with I'm sorry. Stuff wells up trying to callous over and save face. I'm sure he desperately needs to believe he's not a bad guy right now, both in his own eye's and Gods while he looks into the abyss. This is so characteristic of these guys.
Back to skepticism. Being nice helped to get the following out of the Judge "I'm confident you will come out and be a credit to your family". The article goes on to say that at the request of the defense attorney the Judge would recommend to the Bureau of Prisons that he serve his sentence at a conveniently located prison. While the report says he will pay over 1.25 million to victims funds (can't wait to see how much I don't get of that since they wiped out 60 billion in market value) and forfeit 250k in deferred compensation. It also says he keeps his 950k house . It didn't say what his bank account holds.
So there are many reasons to be a nice guy now. Build on the white collar crime"Mulligan". This is the pass you get that says basically that this was just a misstep in an otherwise virtuous life. A perk that inverts itself as you move down the ladder of socioeconomic class. I don't know enough to judge whether the sentence was appropriate. I do think that the justice system didn't do much to improve it's image with regards to Enron though. But what we do have is someone who gambled that he could operate above the law and get away with it and he couldn't. Let's be thankful for that.