7 million sounds like a drop to settle for, plus likely a small fine.
How much does that cost?
if you have money regardless of how you obtained it, the law always favor those with capital for the most part. Unless you try to fight back against government's monopoly on violence....drug traffiking being a major competition, it makes sense why harsh sentences are handed out for drug dealers while white collar criminals that inflict damage to millions of people all over the world gets a slap on the wrist.
The SEC can't bring criminal charges. They levy fines, usually limited to repaying the money one stole plus their administrative expenses, ban people from the industry and refer cases for criminal prosecution. Their point is to stop damage, not necessary punish it.
The criminal process is more selective about what it attacks. It's where justice is delivered. As a result of due process, it's also much slower.
I remember similar complaints in the months between the civil penalties for Holmes et al and the announcement of criminal charges. These things take time. Sometimes, the bar for criminality isn't met. That said, the most damaging parts of this to Rothenberg are (a) the bad publicity and (b) being barred from the industry. The latter is probably much worse than $7 million.
Can I get a source on this?
Politics as a Vocation.
http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/class%20readings/weber/po...
The United States is that exception, because our constitution explicitly recognizes, not grants, our right to arm ourselves independently of the State (or States really), only with some regulation permitted.
The actual definition of State can easily be found in the dictionary: "a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government."
Also it's obviously implied that the right to bear arms includes the right to use them under at least some circumstances. It would just be as ludicrous as saying freedom of the press only covers your right to own a press in your house or business and not your right to print things with it.
And in doing so, they are acting as self-deputized agents of the state. They're temporarily "arming" themselves with the state's power to use violence in furtherance of its (legitimate) interests in enforcing its laws. They could not legally do that without the state's sanction.
EDIT: Some countries don't even limit the power of "citizen's arrest" to their own citizens. The UK's relevant statute specifically says "any person", emphasis added, may act thusly.
It is not a pitchfork and torch mob that should come after you should you appear to have committed a serious crime, but rather the government's police agencies that will come to arrest you, very physically if need be.
Thanks for the clarification + source.
Putin has clearly mastered a new type of war that specifically weakens America's monopoly on violence both domestically and internationally.
You can already see the symptoms of an institution slowly coming to gripes to a major espionage campaign that did not stop after the USSR fell but evolved into a criminal state, one that explicitly seeks to include criminal elements to distance the Kremlin.
Americans rely on a network of multi-national corporations to do their bidding, Russians rely on the mob.
I just hate this mentality. Listen, I know things have been rough and defeatism is a natural way to feel in that context. But "giving up" is one of the ways things end up like this. Don't give up. Fight for justice.
When there is nothing you can do, you must wait and look for an opportunity. It's not so much the giving up on fighting that's the problem, it's the giving up on hope. Improvements come slowly and are the result of much patient work.
Having said that, I hate waiting as much as the next person. :-(