What Joe Biden Could Learn From Abraham Lincoln About White-Collar Crime

[soothsayer]

Link to tweet

?s=21


Mike Grubman
@MikeGrubman
Trump and the GOP, being grifters, do not pass or enforce white collar criminal laws. Here is one idea from Jennifer Taub - Joe Biden

What Joe Biden Could Learn From Abraham Lincoln About White-Collar Crime
washingtonmonthly.com
https://t.co/L9Jr2AErsN?amp=1

This winter, the president granted clemency to a slew of mainly affluent felons. Their offenses? Bribery, investment fraud, tax evasion, Medicare fraud, public corruption, an extortion cover‑up, money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the federal government, obstruction of justice, mail fraud, wire fraud. The White House announcement used the word “successful” four times to describe those receiving pardons but made no mention of their victims.

Let’s start with Holmes. According to the indictment, in one fraud scheme, the alleged victims were Theranos investors, and for the other: doctors and patients. The government described one patient who received a lab report falsely stating that he was HIV-​positive. Another was given a test result that said she was not pregnant, only to learn from another lab that she had a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy. Yet in February, the judge ruled that allegations that Holmes had defrauded doctors could not go forward. The only patients who can be counted in the defrauding case were those who paid for their blood tests out of pocket, not those with insurance coverage....

The harm goes beyond these examples. White collar crime in America, such as fraud and embezzlement, costs victims an estimated $300 billion to $800 billion per year. Yet street-level “property” crimes, including burglary, larceny, and theft, cost far less— around $16 billion annually, according to the FBI. A 2019 Federal Trade Commission report estimated that in 2017, around 40 million Americans fell prey to mass-market consumer fraud schemes. But no government agency measures and reports full white-collar crime statistics. Individual private researchers try to piece it together....

Most promising would be to expand the False Claims Act, which gives special standing to regular people ­to bring legal cases on behalf of the U.S. against corrupt government contractors. Once known as “Lincoln’s Law,” it originally targeted businesses that were using wartime shortages to overcharge and provide shoddy goods, including poorly made uniforms to the federal government.

[Cha]

1. KR