You think it's awful that white-collar criminals are treated more gently than ordinary lawbreakers? Well, you ought to love this:
A federal judge sentenced 72-year-old Norman Schmidt last week to a mind-bending 330-year prison sentence after he was found guilty last May of a laundry list of conspiracy and fraud charges. Barring a scientific breakthrough in cryogenic technology, Schmidt will spend the rest of his days behind bars.
[. . .]
Judges now focus more on the offense—and less on the offender—when sentencing white-collar convicts. As a result, they effectively tally up the amount of losses and number of victims to calculate a punishment, Berman says.
The math did not work out well for Schmidt.
According to the Department of Justice, hundreds of investors gave Schmidt tens of millions of dollars. Schmidt and others said they would invest the money and promised monthly returns of between 2 and 200 percent.
But instead, Schmidt and others used the money for different purposes.
As one of the commenters notes, maybe Schmidt should have just started killing the witnesses. He probably wouldn't have gotten any more time than he did for the fraud.
