... (scroll down; read the whole page) you’d be SO not surprised at the Jeffrey Epstein story! Boys’ clubs will be boys’ clubs – they’ll ignore bad boys forever cuz they kinda like them.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Sloan’s decision to keep Bitran for years after [a 2009 news story about his Madoff connection], and eight months after he agreed to pay the SEC some $4.8 million, suggests the school did not think the transgressions warranted stronger action against him.

Yeah. Well. What can MIT say? If it were honest it would say Man if we bumped every b-school boy doing a doo-doo on the SEC, we’d have to declare bankruptcy…

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.

Whether it’s one of their most admired deans or one of their most admired graduates, MIT exhibits the “beautiful indifference” long identified by the psychiatric community as an unsettling insouciance in regard to one’s own dire condition.

Dean Gabriel Bitran rots in prison while MIT publications continue to admire his commitment to “producing leaders with a social conscience.” To this day, MIT has said not one word about Bitran, though one of his campus colleagues has keened over his “immense suffering” as he dealt with the legal implications of having swindled thousands of people out of millions of dollars.

As for Sloan grad Chris Clemons, who is not currently but will soon be in prison… You’d think all those tech geniuses at MIT could figure out a way to remove this from the internet. Or if they don’t like doing that sort of thing, they could append an update to this front page article slobbering over Clemons for his selfless beneficence. Otherwise, since Clemons seems to have embezzled huge funds from the charter schools he founds, sentences like this one from the MIT article about him read a bit … awkwardly…

[W]hat really got me excited were the structural aspects of running a school, like finance, and accounting, and becoming a sophisticated leader of a multimillion dollar organization.

When he said “excited,” Clemons turns out to have had in mind spending tens of thousands of school dollars at “Hooters, Twin Peaks, and the strip clubs Goldrush Showbar and the Cheetah Lounge.”

The thing is, a lot of people start charter schools with just “passion.” But, Clemons explains, you also need MBA types like him.

“Sometimes charter schools struggle to efficiently manage their resources It’s a painful divide in the non-profit sector between those who have some business skills
and acumen and those who don’t.”

UD ain’t complaining that Sloan hires and graduates a few stinkers. Everybody does that. She wonders why the school just smiles like an idiot and pretends the stinkers have nothing to do with MIT.

UD loves this shit. A hugely influential, venerated, and privileged MIT professor spends years and years stealing more than a hundred million dollars from clients. He did business with Bernard Madoff.

The Bitrans [this was one of those adorable father/son things] paid themselves as much as $16 million in management fees over the life of the businesses and recovered $12 million of their own investments when the funds were doing poorly, the U.S. said in court filings, adding that the two discussed their scheme in e-mail exchanges.

In addition to defrauding investors, the Bitrans lied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and sought to hide assets by transferring property to a relative without the relative’s permission, prosecutors said.

And a fellow professor gets up during sentencing (three years and nine months) to anguish over his suffering during the long ordeal of running a Ponzi scheme, and to praise his excellent character.

And how does his colleague know firsthand how he’s suffered? Because for all of those “past few years” – in fact, since 2009, long after his Madoff connection and wrongdoing were publicly known – he remained an influential, venerated, and privileged MIT professor. He was even an associate dean. He finally left the school in 2013.

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MIT has said nothing and done nothing in all this time. UD doubts that even now – with Bitran suiting up for prison – MIT will say anything about having for years retained on its faculty a massive fraudster.

Meanwhile, all over MIT websites there are statements like this one:

Deputy Dean Gabriel Bitran discussed [with the Financial Times the importance of] producing leaders with a social conscience.

Like Bernard Madoff’s Yeshiva University, you can direct your IT people to erase all images and mentions of Bitran on the school website. I mean, I’m sure MIT is busy scrubbing scrubbing scrubbing right now.

When you ask yourself why so many people detest professors, think of MIT and the way it protected Gabriel Bitran.

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Oh by the way. How were the thieves caught?

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.

Here’s a management tip direct from the Sloan School:

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

Whether it’s MIT’s beloved Gabriel Bitran or the University of Kentucky’s much-cherished Dongping “Daniel” Tao, bad boys and certain universities go together like a horse and carriage. Who knows why, with ooooodles of information about these professors’ wrongdoings, these universities just kept on keeping them on? Starting three years ago, Tao’s habit of, uh, enslaving his graduate students was duly noted by higher-ups at UK, but too much bourbon and too much football seems seems to have distracted them… Because they dint do nuthin.

Emboldened, Tao blew off the whole “university professor” thing and used UK as cover for his private consulting business (in which UK grad students were his slaves – this is a variant on the Cecilia Chang story). A kind of cherry-on-top is that he double billed both clients and UK for all kinds of fun travel and restaurants.

It’s very hard to uncover fraud when you’re … well, how to put this kindly…

And why, you might ask, not? Here’s one of your deans, a man who taught at your business school for decades, and you have nothing to say?

The former deputy dean of MIT’s business school and his son agreed to plead guilty Tuesday to operating a $500 million hedge fund scam.

Gabriel Bitran, 69, who taught at MIT for 35 years and served as deputy dean at the Sloan School of Business for five, allegedly lied to clients about the return on investments his hedge fund GMB Capital Partners was delivering.

He’ll probably go to prison for five years. He kissed the ass of Bernard Madoff (that’s how the SEC discovered his scam). He lied and tried to hide funds when the SEC started being interested. He skimmed millions off of his scammed money for himself.

He’s a dumbfuck too, having admitted in a series of emails to his son/partner in crime exactly what he was doing every step of the way.

This guy did incalculable damage to many people, and one of our highest-profile, most-esteemed universities harbored and esteemed him for over a generation. Gave him cover. Gave him respectability.

But eh we don’t wanna say nothing, man… It’s … pending! We don’t do pending…

But they were found guilty. What’s pending? You’re waiting a decent interval to see how many years he gets?

Way back in 2012 – when Bitran was barred from the securities industry and had to pay a massive fine to the SEC – MIT did the same thing: “It has nothing to do with the school.”

UD gets that universities dread being tainted by the crooks they hire and promote. But with something this high-profile, you simply have to acknowledge it and regret it and all of that. Otherwise you leave people wondering why your school retained a highly praised and highly compensated Ponzi schemer in its school of business.

Take a look at Yeshiva University – look at how well it’s doing with alumni giving and credit ratings and all of that in the wake of its decision to pretend that Bernard Madoff and Ezra Merkin had nothing to do with the school.