Thursday, May 25, 2006

Lay and Skilling Guilty, Aunt Millie Finally Sees Some Justice

Kenneth Lay and his Kenneth Skilling have been found guilty of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. Sentencing is scheduled for September 11 and Lay and Skilling - considering their ages - are potentially facing life sentences.

A lot of us can now reflect that maybe "Aunt Millie" has finally seen a little justice.

Here is a "tidbit" from a previous post, I wrote:

"Enron was illegally manipulating energy costs by faking plant failures etc. California suffered the brunt of it with outrageous bills and blackouts. In taped conversations between the traders at Enron, poor old Aunt Millie (a grandmother from San Diego on a fixed income) was brought up and it was (jokingly) suggested that she use candles."

Link, here.

Please note that Aunt Millie was facing electrical bills of close to $1,000.00 a month on a fixed income, while Lay and Skilling reaped enormous personal benefits. These "fine fellows" ripped off their investors, employees, the State of California and many others for billions of dollars.

Even now - that justice has been served - the victims in all of this will probably never be made whole. Proposed settlements in the civil portion represent pennies on the dollar and are unlikely to reach anyone individually.

Additionally, it appears they still have a lot of financial resources and a "full scale" effort towards appealing these verdicts is yet to come. While "Aunt Millie" and all the other victims in this case might have seen a little justice, Lay and Skilling still have the "means" to mount a formidable defense.

Hopefully - when this is all said and done - their "means" will have been returned to those they have victimized.

For another post, I did adressing Ken Lay's defense effort, link here.

For the Houston Chronicle's blog on the trial, link here.

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