Most of the names will be very familiar, and fairly recent for those following the news in 2008. But the small captions provided with each name provide some surprising details (or at least did so for me). For instance, Société Générale trader Jerome Kerviel, who started the swindling season with an $8 billion loss for the French banking giant has apparently paid his dues to society (but probably won’t ever be able to pay back Société)…
“… Kerviel served less than two months in prison and currently works at an information systems and computer security consulting firm.”
Holy cow! Kerviel apparently exceeded his authority, hid his actions, and personally lost SG billions… and all he gets is a few weeks of jail time. And who says the employment picture is bleek? You can lose billions of dollars in 2008, be fired and sent to prison for it, and still find yourself a new job before the year is up. Nation of whiners, indeed. We need more hardworking Kerviel’s.
And my favorite Scandal frontman for the year (the fourth entry in the Huffington list), Broadcom’s Daniel Plainview (a.k.a. Henry T. Nicholas III):
“Broadcom founder and CEO Henry T. Nicholas III was indicted in June for a slew of charges including felony drug possession, conspiracy and securities fraud. He reportedly built an underground sex cave at his California estate where he could indulge his “manic obsession with prostitutes” and “addiction to cocaine and Ecstasy,” according to a lawsuit filed by a construction team hired to build the lair.”
!!!
How did I not hear about the sex dungeon? I heard about the use of drugs and prostitutes to… lubricate business dealings at Broadcom. But a sex dungeon?? More crazy sex stories can be found in this LA Times article from 18 months ago.
And if you are going to build a sex dungeon, illegally and secretly without your wife’s knowledge, wouldn’t you try to avoid being a total asshole to the construction crew? Seems like they’d have a lot of leverage on your deviant ass. Guess he forgot to dose their drinks with meth and Ecstasy. Oh, and he is responsible for some stock option backdating fraud or something like that too. I think.
Favorite things about the Nicholas case (and there are many):
- He had a bodyguard named Kato! Like the Green Hornet!
- The dude really looks just like a mix between Daniel Day-Lewis’ evil characters (Daniel Plainview and Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting)
- Apparently (as far as I can surmise from this photo) took people on a camera-friendly tour of his crazy sex caverns. Baller.
- The aforementioned Kato, in his lawsuit against Nicholas, claims Nicholas would perform Judo chops on people. Which, I guess, infringes on Kato’s responsibilities.
- Underground. Basketball. Court. That is sick. I could almost overlook the rest.
… and the cow goes moo
