Good summary of our focus here at University Diaries over the years. It’s from Theo Baker, whose book provides useful Stanford University orientation materials.
Good summary of our focus here at University Diaries over the years. It’s from Theo Baker, whose book provides useful Stanford University orientation materials.
Taking a page from Diddy’s book, this bigtime thief announces he’s now all about “intense religious study, community service and therapy,” so he should only suffer a touch of probation rather than the heavy jail time he richly deserves.
“Schwartz’s greed was boundless.” US District Attorney, Georgia.
And as to whether, day after tomorrow, he’ll actually get his ass out of his 19 million dollar penthouse, what do you think? A liar who has reneged on every promise he ever made… Leave? Not leave? Cough up those daily contempt fines? Hm… hm… “Even though it was put on the market last year for $19M, attorneys … wrote in bankruptcy court filings that Schwartz, his wife and children continued to live there, preventing any genuine attempts at a sale. It has since been taken off the market.”
“He never closed on [promised business] deals and instead drained roughly $54M from [clients] to spend on personal expenses, luxury watches.” One of the watches was a $120K Grönefeld 1941 Remontoire.
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UPDATE: Schwartz, the Brooklyn-born real estate investor, had more than a dozen supporters in the courtroom, who let out a gasp when [the judge] issued [a] seven-year, three-month sentence.
GASP — A person who stole 54 million dollars GETS PRISON TIME???
Another feather in Wharton’s financial criminals hat!
Background on this remarkable school here.
The Forbes 30 Under 30 list has become a meme in the past few years as a few of the honorees have found themselves indicted on fraud. The Forbes-to-Fraud pipeline includes FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, co-CEO of Alameda Research; fintech Frank founder Charlie Javice; and “Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli.
Add Joanna Smith-Griffin.
Sixteen percent of its directors have been crooks. During the glory years (2004 – 2011) they went from Rodrigo Rato, soon to start another jail term, to Dominique Strauss Kahn.
Has the IMF ever issued a statement distancing itself from its mafia? UD doesn’t think so. Why not?
Has Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, which long touted Rato’s having graduated from the school, ever issued any kind of statement acknowledging his crimes? Again, UD doesn’t think so. All over the web you can find them praising their Frankenstein. Don’t you think the school should say something official? Or maybe it doesn’t care.
… The major job of today’s university presidents is to solicit money, and their largest targets are typically denizens of Wall Street.
For the same reason, boards of trustees are packed with wealthy alumni, often from the Street, who routinely veto candidates for university presidents harboring views they find offensive.
But not until now have major donors so brazenly used their financial influence to hound presidents out of office for failing to come out as clearly as the donors would like on an issue of campus speech or expression.
As a Jew, I cannot help but worry, too, that the actions of these donors will fuel the very antisemitism they claim to oppose – based on the perilous stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world.
… about which Leon Cooperman weepingly complained, is nothing. Now they’re profiling them!
Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay said his March 2014 arrest for driving under the influence was a result of prejudice against him for being white and wealthy…
“I am prejudiced against because I’m a rich, white billionaire.”
People also probably take against him for his tendency toward redundancy (“rich… billionaire”) and his tendency to endanger us all by driving while high as a kite.
Irsay had the painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone as well as alprazolam, which is used to treat anxiety, in his system at the time of his arrest. Officers on the scene said he had trouble reciting the alphabet and failed other field sobriety tests.
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And UD pledges to be kinder to this much-misunderstood demographic.
LEWIS tipped both O’CONNOR and WAUGH and encouraged them to trade based on material, non-public information. In one instance, LEWIS gave O’CONNOR and WAUGH loans, each worth $500,000, so they could buy a company’s stock before the public release of favorable clinical results. In connection with that loan, O’CONNOR texted a friend to buy the stock, told the friend the “Boss is helping us out and told us to get ASAP,” and assured the friend that “All conversations on app is encrypted so all good. No one can ever see.”
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Wow. You know you’ve made it when your bail is set at $300 million.
Bankrupt, and drop dead GORGEOUS.
I told you it’s hard to keep up.
Even if, like UD, you really try.
Asked for a reaction, one Wharton insider said: “We clearly need to search our soul. But we haven’t got a soul.”
But surely the school knows that Wharton has produced REAMS of indicted businesspeople. You can get a start on the honor roll on this blog. UD decided a few years ago to keep track of jailed Wharton grads (start with the Dec. 28, 2017 post), but she couldn’t keep up.
Mr. Ng’s lawyers have attacked Mr. Leissner’s credibility, calling him a two-time bigamist — a description that Mr. Leissner acknowledged was true.
Now see that’s the part I’ll never understand. You’re running a vast, multi-million dollar criminal enterprise against the United States government. If you get caught, the prospect of your ever getting out of jail is dim. And yet when some entity at some point in your complex shakedown process refuses payment, YOU SUE THEM.
Does it not occur to you that it would be better to take this or that secondary loss and keep your head down?
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Reminds UD of MIT’s sainted Dean Gabriel Bitran. He had a great criminal enterprise going until he and his son CONTACTED THE SEC.
The scheme was uncovered by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission when, while investigating potential victims of the Bernie Madoff fraud, SEC officials asked for documentation to support the Bitrans’ returns claims. The Bitrans then made false statements to the SEC examiners and provided fabricated records.
Ja, ja, the common thread here is mindless bottomless promiscuous depraved and degenerate GREED. I get it. Not one cent that you’ve earned through unnecessary surgeries or investor swindling must be allowed to slip through your hands. And by the way if Madoff money is being handed out, you’re damned well going to get some. Etc.
The criminal mind certainly has its … caesuras. I mean, no one is perfect – I get that, too – but you’d think veteran villains would avoid making unforced errors.
It’s hard to put the big guys away (just ask John Hammergren), but they did just get Laurence Doud, and that ain’t chopped opioids.
He got the pharmacist award the same year he was indicted, which means that the Pharmacists Society has now had, uh, five years to stop boasting about him.
The criteria for this award is very selective and discerning… He has provided creativity, innovation, and moral support for decades to his true passion: pharmacy. Doud also received an Honorary Doctorate from Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Science in 2016.
That’s six years the Albany College has had to mull its decision to honor CEO Inmate Number One.
Les Suissérables
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken
There’s a pain goes on and on
Empty jets and covid breaches
Now António’s dead and gone
He diverted to the Maldives
Just to have some harmless fun
And the bank paid for the Cessna
Which is — just the way it’s done…
But then nasty jealous voices
Spilled the beans on Chairman Tón
They objected to his privilege
And his seats at Wimbledon
I can hear his weeping now!
The very rules that he had broken
Became his last communion
On his final private flight
At dawn
‘Credit Suisse, oh Suisse, forgive me
That I drained you and am done
There’s much more I could have taken
But those dreams are dead and gone’
Phantom pilots at the cockpit
Phantom stewards at the door
Empty seats on empty Cessnas
Where António sits no more
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte