>But what kind of staff or funding does it take to say literally different words out of your mouth like, you are fined $5B instead of $5MM?
Because we don't live in an autocracy, and government fines can (and are) successfully challenged in court. It takes an immensely greater effort, and immensely greater resources, to enforce a $5B fine vs a $5M fine.
How do you get away with defending tax fraud to the point where the fine is pointless? Does the SEC not get to keep the winnings to use for their future cases so they can hire a ton of lawyers? I guess the real problem is why are judges (presumably everywhere?) lettings companies and organizations get away with this or is there a specific set of judges that only handle SEC cases? Perhaps the first step to getting bigger fines is to just keep increasing fines across the board? Do they need to campaign to judges to remind them that financial crime is bad? How hard is it for anyone to understand that a fine is meaningless unless it hurts, no matter how big the number is? Do you really need more lawyers to prove that basic point? I guess you guys are stuck in a pretty crappy system, but then again I'm sure most places are :/
The piece you are missing is that the $5M figure is not what the SEC "decided," because this was a mutually-agreed settlement, not an SEC-dictated fine. A low figure is not a sign that the SEC is asleep at the wheel so much as a signal of their confidence about taking it to trial.
