Although you may be bored of hearing details of white collar crimes, this story should interest even the most jaded news hounds. David Brooks, former CEO of a body armor company, is on trial for stock fraud, insider trading and using company funds to pay for lavish personal items such as cosmetic surgery for his wife, prostitutes for his staff, and a $100,000 belt buckle. At least some of this money was yours. That is, Mr. Brooks’ body armor company had military contracts and so taxpayer money was used to buy body armor from him for troops overseas as well as local police.
But of course, if you are cooking the books at your company, you have to find some way to deal with the money men – the people in charge of making sure your books are straight. Specifically of concern to Mr. Brooks was his CFO, Dawn Schlegel.
[Lightbulb Moment!]
So Mr. Brooks came up with an ingenious idea: Get the vet who looks after his racehorses to invent a memory erasing pill! Said pill could then be slipped into Ms. Schlegel’s drink and voila – she knows nuffink about any funny math on the company books. An excellent and foolproof plan with only one drawback: There is no such thing as a memory erasing pill.
And so Mr. Brooks sat and listened this year as Ms. Schlegel, her memory apparently intact and keen, spent 23 days testifying against him[…]
D’oh!
I wish I could afford a stable of racehorses and a vet to take care of them. I’d tell that vet to invent a pill that could make me immune to government control by such evil things as bar codes and the census.
Fascinating when you look at the number of years this went one and, as outrageous as it was, the amount of time and taxpayer money it took (and is taking) to bring him down. A forged board resolution gave him 10% of the profits, yet nobody knew? And it took four years for our courts to get to this point in the trial. And he’s only one of many, many others like this. Now, if it takes this long in a public company, it could be forever in a private non-profit like HSUS.