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Jail Time For Price-Fixing Car Parts
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Dept. of Justice has announced that Panasonic and its subsidiary Sanyo have been fined $56.5 million for their roles in price fixing conspiracies involving battery cells and car parts. The fines are part of a larger investigation into the prices of auto parts. Interestingly, 12 people at various companies have been sentenced to jail time, and three more are going to prison. Since the charges are felonies, none of the sentences are shorter than a year and a day. Criminal fines targeting these companies has totaled over $874 million. 'The conduct of Panasonic, SANYO, and LG Chem resulted in inflated production costs for notebook computers and cars purchased by U.S. consumers. These investigations illustrate our efforts to ensure market fairness for U.S. businesses by bringing corporations to justice when their commercial activity violates antitrust laws.'"
The Fed caught the crooks, fined them, and threw some of them into the slammer.
But what about the consumers who had been cheated ?
Don't we deserve some refunds?
I mean, we paid overpriced batteries for our notebooks, overpriced car parts for our vehicles, and so on.
Don't we deserve to get our money back ?
Any attorney here ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Well it turns out that the US justice system is one such that people have to actually violate a law to be tried and convicted, not to just make someone on Slashdot mad. So, if you think a banker should go to jail, then let's hear the details: Who is it, what law did they break, and what evidence do you have of this? Also remember it had to be illegal at the time they did it. If new laws were introduced later in response to what happened, those don't count, the US Constitution explicitly prohibits ex post facto laws.
"They caused the economy to crash!" is not a valid answer, and also shows a rather large amount of ignorance of the situation (if you think the downturn had a singular cause, you need to do more research).
This whining gets a little old. People cry that "the bankers" (or "banksters" in your case) should go to jail but yet never seem to be able to cite specifics. That to me says you don't actually know of any laws broken, you are just mad and think that you're angry should be reason enough to convict someone.
So, if there are specific cases you think should be prosecuted, then don't whine about "banksters" as some large group, any more than someone should whine about "hackers" as some large group. Post those specific cases. If not, then maybe spend some time reconsidering your position.