White-Collar Crime And Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Cards

Stick up a bank - - Beaver Dam man sentenced to 16 years in Horicon bank robbery - - or steal from a program for the poor, and you go to jail.

But things are different for the bank itself - - JP Morgan agrees to $5.1bn fine with mortgage regulator - -or a big business stealing from a program for the poor.

Even in an era when corporations are people, too,my friend.

Then a fine takes care of the troubles and for the people at the top:

SAC Capital Agrees to Plead Guilty to Insider Trading

...on Monday, federal prosecutors announced that Mr. [Steven] Cohen’s firm, SAC Capital Advisors, had agreed to plead guilty to insider trading violations and pay a record $1.2 billion penalty, becoming the first large Wall Street firm in a generation to confess to criminal conduct...

Insider trading at SAC was “substantial, pervasive and on a scale without precedent in the history of hedge funds,” said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan. His office has criminally charged eight former SAC employees; six have pleaded guilty.

Mr. Cohen’s apparent nonchalance — even as the firm bearing his initials admitted it was a criminal organization — reflects what is missing from the plea deal. After more than a decade of poring over trading records, interviewing informants and issuing grand jury subpoenas, federal authorities have not been able to build a case against SAC’s billionaire owner.