Case Study: the Trial of Martha Stewart

On 11/6/2017 at 1400 hours, I Officer Graves, responded to 735 E Haggard Ave Elon, NC 27244 in reference to an assist. Upon arrival Detective Turney, Lieutenant Sweat, and Officer Peters were at apartment K executing a search warrant. I was requested to remain outside of the residence at the front door. At 1426 hours Captain B. Tillotson entered the residence and left at 1441 hours. At hours Officer Peters released Jacy Loshin from the premises after issuing a citation. At 1455 hours Officer Chavis entered the residence and remained until the search warrant execution was completed at 1530 hours, when all remaining officers cleared.

The fact that the insider trading charges were thrown out, but the conspiracy charges stuck is curious. It appears, yet again, the judicial process and mainstream social construct of acceptable behavior collided with what Martha, her broker, and fellow investor touted as ‘nothing wrong’. Knowing more of John Savarrese’s role as Martha’s pretrial counsel, gives two more important points about Martha’s case of white collar crime. The first is questionable ethics and the other is arrogance. Mr. Savarrese has been criticized by legal analysts for not providing ethical legal advice to Martha or making the right professional choices himself. The belief is that Savarrese knew or at least suspected, Martha and Bacanovic planned to perjure themselves. As Martha’s legal counselor it was ethically negligent of Savarrese not to advise Martha of the legal repercussions of lying to the SEC. If Martha insisted on presenting her fraudulent story, Savarrese should have immediately withdrawn as her counsel (Hoffman, 2007). More importantly than if Savarrese knew or not, in her arrogance, Martha never thought this issue of a mere $45, 637 would develop into charges nor a prison sentence! She was simply above the laws and saw no reason to tell the

Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in

Fraud, lying, conspiracy...not terms that any individual generally wants associated with their history, nonetheless with their reputation and personality, especially if that individual happens to be Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart: a name which almost every person who calls themselves an American can recognize. Her name pronounces itself across cookbooks, magazines and even has its own show on Style and The Learning Channel. It now pronounces itself with yet another captivating theme, as part of one of America's major scandals.

Similarly, Jordan Belfort committed illegal acts within his business, including selling penny stocks disguised as blue chip stocks to wealthy individuals and generating

The trial court erred and abused its discretion in granting the State’s motion to admit evidence of prior uncharged incidents of domestic violence, because the evidence denied Mr. Davis of his rights to due process of law as guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and Article I, Section 10 of the Missouri Constitution, in that the evidence was more prejudicial than probative because it was too remote in time to be relevant to the charged crimes and had a prejudicial effect.

Also, it was reported that he purchased an estimate of $200,000 in cash for new cars alongside his hoe upgrade. These purchases came out from several bank accounts that were from different banks to help pay off his mortgage that cost over 80,000 dollars. This brought up red flags because the annual salary for the Director of Finance was estimated to be 80,000 dollars and he had no other income reported. Thus, this brought suspicion from the Government, which forced him to plead guilty due to fraud of receiving illegal federal funds. As a result, he is facing five years in federal prison. As for Sharika Allison, she has been guilty for fraud because her annual salary as a Controller was 62,000 dollars and she had no proof of additional income reported. Thus, she pleaded guilty of committing fraud upon receiving illegal federal funds and was sentenced to three years to federal

They have been on multiple counts (46) including money laundering, bank fraud, insider trading and conspiracy. Jeffrey convicted 19 and put in prison over 24 years. Kenneth had been convicted of fraud 6 times and went to jail for 45 years. Jeffery also did shady business trades.

She took an opportunity when she received word that the company, ImClone was about to crash to remove 4,000 shares where she would avoid losing about 46k dollars. Investigation into the case and begun and developments in the case had started surfacing on the truths in the case. On December 27th, Martha Stewart told investigators that she was traveling on a trip when she called to check her messages and her broker had stated that the company had fallen under $60 per share so he sold them. According to the literature, Martha Stewart claims that she had set up a “stop-loss” order, which states if the shares fell below $60/share that they would be sold. Unfortunely, this was not the case when the broker’s assistant came forward and told Merrill Lynch that his boss had told him to lie about the “stop-loss” order. He started cooperating with federal investigators and later was fined and fired from the company along with his boss for the involvement they had in the scandal. On the other hand, after everything started falling apart, Martha Stewart later resigned from her board at the New York Stock Exchange. Later in August, investigators begin building their case against Martha Stewart in her involvement with inside trading and lying about the “stop-loss” order. Investigators reached out to Stewart’s lawyers but later made a statement that Martha Stewart would be pleading the Fifth Amendment and keeping quit about anything to do with the case. As a result, the SEC filed charges against Martha Stewart, and she was found guilty on four counts of obstructing justice and lying to federal investigators. On June 17, 2004, Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison and two years of supervised release along with a healthy fine attached. Till this day, Martha Stewart pleads her innocence and states that she did not do anything wrong. She is currently making a comeback with her company and

On August 25th 2015 Co-Founder of OXYwater Preston J. Harrison and his Wife Lovena Harrison were sentenced for Wire Fraud, Money Laundering and Tax Crimes. (Investor Claims, August 2015). I chose this case because it has many different types of fraud, including wire fraud, money laundering, and tax fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, concealment of fraud, theft and misappropriation of funds. What makes this case so interesting is that the husband and wife co-owners of OXYwater are not the only criminals. Their co-conspirator was Thomas E. Jackson;

The argument that I am making should be addressed to Baconivic and the people that agree with his business ethics. Instead of having a Carr mindset, I have more of a Drucker mindset. With my Drucker mindset, I would address Baconivic and these people about how spreading insider information to only a select few is against the law and how it could ruin their image as people in the working field. No matter whether you are a senior broker or assistant, ruining your image in the working field does no good to anyone. All their hard work up to that point will diminish and trying to gain back a good reputation will be difficult. As many parents tell their children, Baconivic and his supporters should put themselves in the shoes of other shareholders that will fairly lose money from their investments in the ImClone company. By doing so, they will be able to mentally see and feel the loss that happens through stocks. Instead of trying to give certain people unfair advantages, higher authoritative positions in companies should be more ethical and try to give reassurance that the stocks will raise

Kate is the owner of a successful business, selling women’s shoes. Her business is expanding fast and she wants to upgrade her business structure to a more appropriate one. What would be your recommendation to Kate and why? What are the factors that influence you with this advice?

In today’s society crime occurs everyday across all aspects of life. One particular crime is that of white collar and corporate level crime. It is important that we as a society study this type of crime in depth because many individuals believe that white collar and corporate level crimes are victimless crimes when in reality they have the potential to destroy major corporations and economies all with one single case. The news or media rarely talk about this type of crime because it is often difficult to understand and individuals typically lack interest in these types of cases. One particular case is that of Jordan Belfort. Dubbed the infamous “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort is a former stockbroker who robbed investors of over $200 million dollars to create his wealth through “pump and dump” schemes, insider trading, money laundering securities fraud, and stock-market manipulation. As an attempt to further understand these complex cases I will break down Belfort’s case as far as the methods and means as to how he got started, his use of “pump and dump” schemes and other means as to how he acquired his wealth. In addition to this I will discuss the sanctions and disciplinary action that Jordan Belfort was given, how the case affected society and what new regulations were

For the mock trial I was assigned to be one of the prosecuting attorneys. After being presented with case materials which included facts of the case, statements from both prosecuting and defense witnesses, penal code for the alleged charges, and map of the crime scene, we as a group decided to create one Google Drive document. There we would upload our parts of the case and help other group members with their assignments.

Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex, he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in