– Peregrine Financial CEO Indicted On 31 Charges (ZeroHedge, Aug 13, 2012):
It only took 20 years, a trail of counterfeit documents, superficial and failed audits, dubious tax returns and one unsuccessful suicide attempt, but in the end they got him: the CEO of failed commodity brokerage Peregrine aka PFG, Russell Wasendorf has been indicted on 31 charges of lying to government regulators regarding the failed brokerage’s operations. He faces a maximum sentence of 155 years’ imprisonment on the charges and fines of about $7.75 million, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa. There is also that whole $215 million in commingled and subsequently stolen client money but that’s another matter. In other words, just like Bernie Madoff, Wasendorf is going away for a long, long time for doing precisely what everyone else does: the first one for engaging in a ponzi even as now everyone acknowledges the entire system is one big ponzi – does that make it better and legitimate: apparently so; the second one for commingling client cash for personal benefit. As a reminder, this is what JPM did with $350 billion in excess deposit cash as part of its London whale trading fiasco, and broadly what every bank in the post Glass-Steagall world does with the roughly $8 trillion in total US bank deposits.More from the WSJ:
Mr. Wasendorf was arrested July 13 on charges of lying to regulators following a suicide attempt on July 9 that included a confession that authorities say detailed a nearly 20-year fraud against Peregrine’s customers. Regulators have estimated that about $215 million in customer money is missing.