Even? Especially.
UD‘s already noted the increasingly criminalized nature of the University of Miami – perhaps our only university able to go head to head, jail-time-wise, with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Anyone surprised that an ethics honcho at the University of Miami is going out of his way to argue that a man caught stealing tens of millions of dollars from trusting clients shouldn’t really have to go to jail for very long doesn’t know this university.
Probably doesn’t even know that in an effort to hide his criminal career and give himself the look of a serious person, a philanthropist, Lew Freeman, like Bernard Madoff (a Yeshiva trustee) and like many others before them, gave lots of his dirty money to a university – the University of Miami, in fact. The University of Miami law school, in fact. An ethics seminar at the University of Miami law school, in fact.
The prosecutor said Freeman’s misconduct was particularly bad because he built a reputation as the “go-to” forensic accountant in South Florida who could be trusted by the community. He noted, for instance, it was “ironic” that Freeman sponsored an ethics lecture series at the UM School of Law.
Nothing ironic about it. Standard operating procedure for criminals hiding behind something legit.
But the University of Miami had better watch it. Eventually its rep will get so bad, the pool of criminals willing to underwrite its ethics seminars will dry up.
July 22nd, 2010 at 8:49PM
Standard operating procedure (SOP), indeed.
Up here in flyover land, Mr. Tom Petters has just drawn 50 years in Leavenworth for a billion dollar Ponzi scheme. He was well known as a donor to charitable institutions, including universities. What a nice man – everyone thought.
Miami University (of Ohio) to their credit returned Petter’s donation of five million dollars when his swindle was uncovered.
Some places, such as the other Miami and even the U of M, are not so fastidious.
According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune 9/11/08, the U played footsie with William McGuire, whose name already adorns a U of M biomedical research building. He is a health insurance executive who lost his job in a stock options scandal. He was to serve as “executive in residence” at the U’s business school. One of the ethical pillars of the Carlson School of Management, Steven Parente, said of his approach to McGuire: “We don’t really care about the stock options. You know stuff. Tell us what you think.”
As Mary Poppins put it: “A spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down.”
August 26th, 2010 at 11:16PM
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September 16th, 2010 at 8:55AM
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