Martha Stewart, founder and CEO of her own multimillion dollar corporation, Martha Stewart Living Omni media was indicted, on charges of lying to investigators, securities manipulation, and obstruction of justice. She was sentenced to five months in a West Virginia state woman’s prison and 5 months on house arrest. Originally it was said that Ms. Stewart was indicted on charges of insider trading, however obviously those charges could not be proven. After a year and a half investigation, she was indicted on totally different charges. Ms. Stewart’s stock broker at the time Mr. Bacanovic, who was employed at Merrill Lynch Investment Company, was also indicted on the same charges. Mr. Bacanovic had his assistant call and give Ms. Stewart non-public information about one of his companies other clients and how the stock in this particular company, Imclone biotech would be dropping the next day. After receiving this information Ms. Stewart authorized her stock broker to sell her stocks in Imclone biotech. She had almost 4,000
shares of stock in the biotech company. This company was said to be on the verge of marketing a new drug that would have a big break in cancer treatment. However it was found out that the Food and Drug Administration would not be approving this particular drug. With this new drug being the companies leading product to lure investors, the President of Imclone knew that the stocks would drop once the announcement was made public. Around the end of December 2001, Imclone’s CEO Sam Waksal, also a client of Merrill Lynch started illegally transferring his stock to his daughter. The intent was to have the daughter start selling off the stock before the FDA made its announcement about not supporting the d...
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...ue to her public statements of no wrong doing. When Ms. Stewart was indicted and realized what affect this trial was having on her beloved company, she resigned as chairwoman and chief executive officer. I believe if Ms. Stewart would have not lied and admitted to wrong doings, that she would have gotten off lighter then she already did with a stack full of lies. Being the beloved Public persona of home decorating that she was, if she would have appealed to her consumers and asked forgiveness I think that the most Ms. Stewart would have paid was a fine. All the lies and cover up only served to give her jail time and lose more money than she was trying to originally save when she sold the stocks before hand. Having really looked in to this case from several different views, it was clear that if Martha Stewart would have told the truth all would have been forgiven.
Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic were indicted on criminal charges arising from Martha Stewarts December 27, 2001 sale of 3,928 shares of stock in ImClone Systems, Inc. ("ImClone"). ImClone is a biotechnology company whose then-chief executive officer, Samuel Waksal, was a friend of Stewart's and a client of Stewart's stockbroker at Merrill Lynch, defendant Peter Bacanovic. On December 25, 2001, ImClone learned that the Food and Drug Administration had rejected the company's application for approval of Erbitux, a cancer-fighting drug. On December 28, the day after Stewart sold her shares; ImClone publicly announced that the Erbitux application had been rejected. Shortly after ImClone's announcement, the Securities and Exchange Commission "SEC" and the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York launched investigations into trading in ImClone stock in advance of the announcement to the public of the news about Erbitux.
“Bernie Madoff began investing in penny stocks in 1960, and due to his impressive work ethic, received several big breaks. The first of which was his father in-law loaning him $50,000 to invest, and soon after, Carl Shapiro, a man who made his fortune in women’s clothing gave Madoff $100,000 to invest on his behalf” (Collins 2011). With this kick-start, Bernie quickly began making a name for him, especially as he promised clients a guaranteed 20% annual return on investment. This, coupled with his firm’s adoption of the latest technology made them a tour-de-force in the investment world. But what makes his eventual downfall more interesting is that he was not just a crook, Madoff did manage a successful, and legitimate brokerage firm. To some extent, the credibility he earned from these legitimate busines...
In the early 2000’s, America’s famous and favorite home cooker made headlines, and not in a positive way. Headlines that would forever change that way people thought about her. Martha Stewart was convicted for misleading federal investigators who were looking into allegations of insider trading which raised several ethical issues. Is being to rich a reason to convict Martha of this crime? If everyone does it, why hold Martha to a higher standard? In this case, insider trading was clearly evident in Martha Stewarts Case.
Many businesses that achieve great success become greedy and want more. Pharmaceutical companies, such as Turing, have been overpricing life-saving drugs since they’ve been discovered. Martin Shkreli, the CEO of the company that raised the price of the H.I.V medicine, was arrested because of wrongdoings involving his former hedge fund and a pharmaceutical company he previously headed. He has been charged with conspiracy to commit security fraud, wire fraud, and using his previous company to cover personal debts. U.S. Attorney Robert Capers says, “As alleged in the indictment, Shkreli essentially ran his companies like a Ponzi scheme, where he used each subsequent company to pay off the defrauded investors in the prior company” (Shkreli).
This case was very interesting and I am really glad I chose it for my paper. Its amazing to me how one man with the right connections and social standing can get away with so much for so long. Nobody ever suspected him because he was the father of the NASDAQ, he couldn’t scam people for billions of dollars. And not just any random people, Mad off targeted his own people, the Jews and groups affiliated with him. He was very picky and pretended like he didn’t want to let anyone in on what he was doing which in turn made more people want to get involved and give him even more money, that’s just human
Corporate executives like Kenneth Lay and Martha Stewart were taken before the court for poor ethical practices. Leaders of pharmaceutical companies have been found knowing about distribution of unsafe products. Leaders at Coke Cola were found guilty of racial discrimination and leaders of cruise ships fined for dumping waste in the ocean. News reports exposed Wall Street analysts who created phony reports, made profits, and pushing worthless stocks, left citizens questioning if they should invest their money. Leaders of the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, were cited for practices of employee abuses and gender discrimination.
Vickie Lynn Hogan grew up in a small, Texas town. She was a product of a difficult childhood due to poverty, her father leaving, and her mother having little to do with her. Feeling the pressures of poverty and the lack of love shown by her mother, Vickie eventually dropped out of school and married Billy Smith at the age of 17. A year after the nuptials she gave birth to a baby boy for which she claims she devoted her life to. The marriage to Billy was short lived and within a year after the birth of their son, she divorced him. (Anna, 2008)
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 restitution to any swindled stock buyers of his brokerage firm (A&E Networks Television). Though his lavish spending and berserk party lifestyle was consumed by excessive greed, he displayed both positive and negative aspects of business communications.
Martha Stewart was charged with securities fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and civil charges. She had made false statements to F.B.I., SEC, and investors. She withhold information from these organizations about the selling of her stocks with in the company of ImClone. She was convicted and sentence to five months in prison, five months of house arrest, and a full two years of probation.
Martha Stewart made a kind of securities fraud known as "insider trading" which means using insider information to make a stock transaction. It is trading in the stock market, making improper use of inside information. This information, most of the time, is held by directors of listed companies and those who provide investment services or counseling.
Martha Washington lived a life full of love and sacrifice. She was born as a simple little girl Martha Dandridge to her plantation home in New Kent; she was married at 18 to become Martha Dandridge Custis. Still yet she was widowed at the age of twenty-six with two children and a land of over 17,000 acres to run on her own. Then she met a gentleman by the name of George Washington and Martha became the figure we know today as Martha Dandridge Custis Washington or Martha Washington.
Stewart did afterward was illegal. She lied about knowing the fact that the Waksal family was selling their shares and falsified the phone message log before having second thoughts and had her assistance restored the original message. Furthermore, she jointly collaborated an untruthful story with her broker to indicate that there was a stop order to sell the stock at $60 per share (SEC, 2003).
Without Boeskey’s help, catching other insider-trading criminals would have been almost impossible. Ivan Boesky even wrote a book about his involvement in the world of insider trading; he called it Merger Mania. This case illustrates that there are real consequences to white collar crime. In addition to paying the fifty million dollar fine, he relinquished another fifty million dollars of his illegal trading profits. He still had millions remaining, however, from his illegal gains.
The original case was about Chiron, a biotechnology company, in the United States. Chiron was acquired in 2006 by Novartis, a Swedish company formed by the merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz Laborites. Since Chiron itself no longer exists, we have focused our case around Novartis as of 2013. Novartis specializes in diagnostic services, generic and name brand medications, ophthalmological tools, as well as a small segment in pet health. The business prides itself in producing the latest drugs, hiring the best talent, and being a global leader in the pharmaceutical industry. Over the years the company has survived by focusing on its internal development in addition to a series of mergers, acquisitions, and corporate restructurings. Being a pharmaceutical company, the entire population is impacted: patients, physicians, employees, hospitals, and investors are some of the most important stakeholders.
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 restitution to any swindled stock buyers of his brokerage firm. Though his lavish spending and berserk party lifestyle was consumed by excessive greed, he displayed both positive and negative aspects of business communications.