IMHO prison is never justified for people that pose no physical danger to others. A reasonably big (as big as he can actually afford) fine and ban on working on government and financial positions could be enough.
That's not what was suggested. What was suggested was "as big as he can actually afford and a ban on working on government and financial positions".
That's called "punitive damages" when they scale to what the criminal can bear, rather than what damage they caused.
I do think these criminals would care about losing _most_ of their money and being barred from working in their field.
Implicit in your comment is that these people have a network that will make them whole no matter what.
A) That’s only true for the very top.
B) Even if they are made whole, the more times the network has to “make someone whole” it gets harder to justify the criminality. Over time the network will start leaving people out to dry.
Also, your comment is unnecessarily dismissive. Your position is valid, you can just state it without trying to insult my intelligence and we can carry on a conversation.
For this person, I think I could support just a fine and a ban on working in the finance industry. I think it's likely he regrets what he did, and is unlikely to cause further harm to society. But there are people like Bernie Madoff (and people who only aspire to be as big a scammer as Madoff) who I think pose a continued, further harm to society.
This is no punishment at all.
> What makes you think there would be more money than what the scammer took?
They probably had something before they have committed the scam and they also might have been getting their fancy salary during the scam too...
Unsure what the legal justification is though