Ken Lay guilty on all counts. A jury has found Enron founder Ken Lay guilty on all six counts against him of fraud and conspiracy, with a combined possible penalty of 45 years in prison. Enron CEO Jeff Skilling was found guilty on 19 of 28 counts for conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud.
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on May 25, 2006 -
96 comments
Find offensive content! The people at Inboxer allow you
register for a free account to use their antispam software on approximately 500,000 Enron emails in a database.
According to a
Wired article, the appliance has found 71,268 inappropriate messages.
And just to add to the fun, they're offering to give away
3 Ipod Shuffles for people who submit the best emails in the "I'd fire him/her" the "Funniest Joke", and the "What were they thinking?" categories.
Just to give you an idea of what we're talking about here, check out this lovely
Booty Call contract. Also, check out the whitepaper they've written,
Monsters in your mailbox (.pdf), and get worried if you're using your business email account for personal messages!
posted by jasper411
on Feb 7, 2006 -
25 comments
Exploring enron -- A breathtaking web of conspiratorial email messages. How often did Jeff Skilling email Ken Lay? How often were those emails about company business? Internal alliances? The company's allegiance? The California energy crisis? Who else was talking about it? Who wasn't?
Temptingly complete with software download and MySQL tables for your own tinfoil hat explorations.
posted by boo_radley
on Jun 13, 2005 -
10 comments
Enron traders caught, on tape, "talking energy" "They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an Enron employee on the tapes. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"
"Yeah, grandma Millie, man"
"Yeah, now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour."
Wacky Enron boys, what
will they say next.....
posted by troutfishing
on Jun 1, 2004 -
36 comments
Before Enron Houston, Texas had been the locus of a
stock scandal of a slightly different sort. Growing up in Houston in the 80s and 90s, I never associated the word "Sharpstown" with anything but a mall, but the area underwent a
development mired in scandal.
In the late 1960s Frank W. Sharp, a Houston businessman, negotiated a deal with a few Texas House Democrats; they would help pass a piece of legislation, and in turn, he would ensure that they would make a profit from his company's stock. In 1971, the dealings
came to light. Most of the public officials connected with the scandal were run out of office, but somehow
one man beat the resulting karma, even it was a a few decades later. But some good did come out of this, as the Texas
Open Records Act was expanded in the aftermath of the scandal.
posted by lychee
on May 15, 2004 -
3 comments
Gore Vidal releases new book about the founding fathers, has some words for the current administration. Vidal: But mostly we find the sort of corruption Franklin predicted. Ours is a totally corrupt society. The presidency is for sale. Whoever raises the most money to buy TV time will probably be the next president. This is corruption on a major scale.
Enron was an eye-opener to naive lovers of modern capitalism. Our accounting brotherhood, in its entirety, turned out to be corrupt, on the take. With the government absolutely colluding with them and not giving a damn.
Bush’s friend, old Kenny Lay, is still at large and could just as well start some new company tomorrow. If he hasn’t already. No one is punished for squandering the people’s money and their pension funds and for wrecking the economy.
So the corruption predicted by Franklin bears its terrible fruit. No one wants to do anything about it. It’s not even a campaign issue. Once you have a business community that is so corrupt in a society whose business is business, then what you have is, indeed, despotism. It is the sort of authoritarian rule that the Bush people have given us.
posted by skallas
on Nov 15, 2003 -
61 comments
If Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected California can say HASTA LA VISTA BABY to 9 billion according to this article by investigative reporter Greg Palast. According to Palast it turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter with Ken (Enron) Lay and Michael Milken as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off. For memories sake here are a few of the the details behind the
California energy scam in this report. Arnold has previously said that he does not remember such a meeting with Ken Lay.
posted by thedailygrowl
on Oct 4, 2003 -
62 comments
Reuters and
AP have stories on The final energy report from the GAO on
Walker v. Cheney. You can see the
Chronology of the GAO's Attempts [PDF] to Obtain Information from the National Energy Policy Development Group, and more at the
GAO Site.
The General Accounting Office sued Vice President Cheney last year to obtain a list of officials from Enron and other companies who met with President Bush's energy task force.
Highlights or read the full report:
GAO-03-894 "Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy"
posted by Blake
on Aug 25, 2003 -
16 comments
Three-Volume report on Enron released today Among the findings: "Enron paid zero federal income taxes from 1996 to 1999, despite reporting $2.3 billion in net income during the period" (from the linked article); executives took "1.4 billion" in compensation packages (
SFGate has a piece on that.); and myriad details about the complicated machinations involved to pull this off (
Mercury News). I am among the outraged though, frankly, I feel like they were just taking advantage of the system as it is was in place. If the economy hadn't tanked, this stuff might never have come out.
posted by amanda
on Feb 14, 2003 -
5 comments
The New York Times published on Sunday a very favorable report on Ken Lay. In it, they argue that he was, at least in part, wrongly chastised for his role in the Enron affair. Apparently, we are to believe that the CEO didn't know what was going on inside the company he ran. After news of the report appeared in numerous U.S. media earlier this week, the BBC today counterattacks
brutally (although perhaps not intentionally), describing some of the most ruthless Enron practices - like placing the combined total salary of the top 200 executives salary at one and a half times the company's total earnings (Lay's went from 15m to 164 mil in that period). My question is simple: just what is going on here?
posted by magullo
on Feb 14, 2003 -
9 comments
Self-fulfilling Prophecy? Enron video says maybe... A video from an Enron company party from 1997 shows executives or other employees playing execs making jokes during skits about how to make "a kazillion dollars" et al. Some of the "methods" they speak of apparently are exactly the things that brought the company down. Looks like the cat was let out of the bag in front of a lot of unsuspecting individuals..
posted by djspicerack
on Dec 16, 2002 -
4 comments
Enron 'Crooked E' For Sale "The ultimate symbol of the bankrupt power trader -- one of the ubiquitous chrome signs dubbed "the Crooked E" for its distinctive slant and commentary on the company's questionable dealings -- is on the auction block." The sign is only one of thousands of items up for sale September 25th and 26th, at the
Houston Radisson Astrodome hotel.
posted by gummi
on Sep 17, 2002 -
7 comments
NY Times Reporter Jumps to His Death: Matt Drudge reports that
New York Times Business reporter/editor Allen Myerson jumped to death at the
NY Times building in New York City on 43rd Street this morning. Myerson was the Weekend Business Editor at the
NY Times and a member of the
Business Journalism Advisory Council. Among other things, Myerson reported on Enron. An abstract of a Myerson article that appeared in the newspaper last December says, "Enron Corp's failure is having repercussions not just on nation's energy industries, but is being felt through retailing, real estate, insurance, banking, Internet services, newspaper publishing, plastics and glass manufacturing, all of which Enron touched in its boundless appetite for risk and growth."
posted by maud
on Aug 22, 2002 -
52 comments
If You Want to Talk About Class Warfare... Molly Ivins gives it to 'em:
Some days, you have to believe that right-wing ideologues have lost touch with reality completely. Their latest proposal to prevent future Enrons is - ta-da! - cut the capital gains tax. And exactly what does that do to prevent future Enrons? Nothing.
posted by Ty Webb
on Aug 15, 2002 -
9 comments
No perp walk for Enron and Halliburton? Asked to explain why no arrests had been made for these two companies, Larry D. Thompson said, "Some cases are more complex than others."
Does it matter what the penalties are for corporate crime? Seems all you need are the right political connections and an adequately complex scheme to defraud investors and employees. Is the White House protecting corporations with their interpretation of whistle blowers? Aren't preventive measures more appropriate than punishments for these crimes? Does wealth truly create a double standard for prosecution under our legal system?
posted by nofundy
on Aug 2, 2002 -
33 comments
Clinton Fires Back at Republican Accusations "There was corporate malfeasance both before he took office and after. The difference is I actually tried to do something about it and their party stopped it. And one of the people who stopped our attempt to stop Enron accounting was made chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission." He also talks about the Middle East and the related "Blame Clinton" movement. I can hear the teeth gnashing already.
posted by owillis
on Jul 28, 2002 -
60 comments
The President "has
more familiarity with troubled energy companies and accounting irregularities than probably any previous chief executive." (NYTimes link, reg req'd)
Krugman chimes in on Whitehouse outrage to corporate fraud.
(See also, Cheney's investigation regarding Halliburton's accounting while he was it's big cheese)
posted by BentPenguin
on Jul 2, 2002 -
12 comments
Enron Fraud dot Com. The law firm of Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach cordially invites Enron stockholders to partake in their class action lawsuit against the fallen energy baron. Great domain, great layout, great case. How could they lose?
posted by tankboy
on Feb 25, 2002 -
6 comments
Enron's historical precidents. This L.A. Times article discusses the historical precidents to the Enron debacle. My favorite (among lots of good stuff):
"Like Enron, ITT was a big campaign contributor. But Geneen's idea of how to use political influence made Lay and associates look like choir boys. In 1970, the company offered Republicans $1 million and consulted heavily with the Nixon White House and the CIA when Chile's new socialist president, Salvador Allende, threatened to seize the ITT-owned Chilean Telephone Co. Allende was overthrown with U.S. aid."
posted by electro
on Feb 22, 2002 -
9 comments
