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Comment by raiyu | Hacker News Reader

White collar crime vs blue collar crime.

White collar crime steal $179MM of assets and get 27 months of home arrest.

Blue collar crime rob a bank to steal $10,000 and spend 10 years in prison.

Re: peer comments noting the difference between violent & non-violent crime. The penal code is full of blue-collar crimes that carry exceedingly stiff penalties.

For example, possession of 12 grams of LSD carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years under federal sentencing guidelines.

> possession of 12 grams of LSD

Reader's note: that's between 50k and 100k doses.

Not that I disagree with your point.

Not when you include the blotter paper in the weight, which is what police often do, in that case it'd likely be <10 doses.

But do the judges also include the blotter paper?

Yes: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/500/453/

This is also why you should NOT attempt to dissolve drugs into drinks if you're caught with them... because they can use the liquid weight of the drink as your charged amount.

This seems like something an even mildly competent lawyer could get you off of. If a chemical is solid at room temperature, it definitely cannot be a liquid at 100% concentration.

I’ve heard of cases where they use the pots and soil in weighing marijuana. The paper seems like it would be included.

To clarify, you are assuming (a big if since the poster made no mention of this) that 12g includes the weight of the paper and if you were to discount that weight then you would get a lesser amount of LSD? i.e. If the paper weighs 11 g then the actual LSD amount would be 1g.

It's not a big if, this is standard practice in the US legal system. They weigh the drug + medium. If you have 1-9 grams, including the paper, minimum first offender sentence is 5 years. With the paper that's only a few doses.

so the impurities/media are considered to be the drug as well as substance itself. Im not very confident with the idea that 1gram of pure crystaline LSD would bring a lesser sentence than a sheet of blotter with one drop on it.

it seems the war on drugs has caused more brain damage than any recreational drug. This is similar to stunts like draining the drizzle from beer cans into one empty can and declaring an open alcoholic beverage was concealed in a vehicle. LEOs can have thier respect back when they stop this sort of nonsense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_Hogg

Yes, that's the claim (which seems supported elsewhere in the thread).

You are probably underestimating the magnitude of the effect, though. A single square of blotter paper weighs on the order of 10 mg; it holds a dose on the order of 50-100 micrograms, about 1% of the paper mass.

Having been myself on grand juries for drug prosecution and subsequently reading more about the process, this is not just a baseless assumption. Including carrier weight is SOP from police+DA for drug charges, and they're not upfront about that fact when talking to the jury. When they say "X grams of Y" what they always mean is "X grams of thing containing Y" which could mean anywhere from X grams of Y to X femtograms of Y in tablets that are mostly chalk. They do this because the legal code isn't specific about measuring active ingredients[see edit] and they are universally incentivized to elevate the charge.

[edit] To clarify, I mean that the law does not say specifically to weigh only the active ingredients. In fact it's the opposite.

According to the previously cited case linked at https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/500/453/, the law is actually very specific about the weight being the whole mixture.

Yes, sorry, that part of what I wrote was unclear, but that's what I meant. I edited to hopefully clarify.

In theory, the defense attorney would provide a counter-balance to this- unfortunately, our system does not provide adequate defense to folks who can't afford it. And that is the real tragedy, methinks.

According to the below linked case, 5.7 grams, including th e paper, was 1,000 doses. So 12 grams probably closer to 2,000 doses, depending on the weight of the paper. (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/500/453/)

Yeah that's a good callout. Some heavy cardstock vs. scritta paper would have dramatically different weights.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that being in possession of 48,000 good strong doses of LSD would seem like a fairly good reason to assume the person is somewhat organised in their criminal leanings.

Calling it blue collar is somewhat of a stretch.

Whether I agree with the spirit of the law in that context is somewhat orthogonal.

Full disclosure: many years ago I moved about 33,000 tabs of LSD on to the streets, took me about three years though.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/01/23/s...

SCOTUS says the medium weight counts. So I'm guessing 12 grams is a lot fewer doses according to the courts?

Stealing intellectual property and trade secrets isn't the same as stealing hard assets.

Bernie Madoff was a white collar criminal that stole real money from clients and is serving life in prison.

Google may have been damaged, but they can still use their software that was stolen.

Interesting, can pure money be treated as virtual goods? and reversing that crime must be easy, no? Like banks reversing those transactions, or invalidating the stolen records and re-allocating funds to affected clients?

Let’s say an employee working for Bank A developed software there. Left Bank A to work for Bank B. Brought his software with him. Bank B has had to spend less money to develop that software and is more profitable had their employee not stolen the code. Bank A and Bank B are competitors. How much would this be considered theft?

A: I steal your house. You are now homeless.

B: I steal the blueprints to your house. You still have a house, but you paid for an architect and I didn't.

B still sucks, but almost everyone agrees A is much worse. And that's why if you steal $20m from a bank, the sentence is much worse than if you copy software that a bank spent $20m to develop.

The architect may not agree with you. He was personally impacted. It’s a matter of upholding intellectual property. I suspect the rampant justification of music pirating from the early 2000s has caused people to have defective morality circuits.

A better example would be this case:

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2019...

Caught spray-painting a federal building in political protest? (Which costs less than a hundred dollars to clean up.) Prosecutors were seeking ten years for that adventure.

Actual sentencing was probably a bit less than a year, but I likewise doubt Lewandowski will serve all 27 months.

Non-violent vs violent crime. There is a difference.

Courts have ruled that robbery is not necessarily violent. If you walk into a bank and say "Excuse me, could I trouble you for a moment of your time? Please hand me all the money in the safe", that's not violent: no threat is made, no gun is brandished, and so on. (It is still a robbery, of course.)

https://blog.federaldefendersny.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/...

Are you being facetious? Because that is the biggest load of crap I've heard. There is no such thing as a non-violent bank robbery. The only reason why a bank teller would acquiesce to the demand, as polite as it is, is because there is a threat of violence. If the teller was guaranteed that no violence would occur if they denied the request, they would tell the would-be-robber to take a hike.

There is, and if both took $10k the violent crime deserves a harsher punishment. But when 18,000x the money is taken, there is a fair bit of hurt for a fair few people.

We live in a dyslexic era. On one end, you have people trying to argue that there is an incarceration crisis in the country and call for reforms to reduce prison sentences for non-violent offenders ... on the other end, if you read a story about a white-collar criminal, people want to increase prison sentences. Which is it?

I think it can be both without being contradictory. Changing what gets you prison time with a resulting overall decrease in the prison population is possible.

If I work for a bank IT department and I siphon off a bit of money from tens of thousands of accounts. How long will I get in prison?

While this is a fair point (due to the difference in money), there is something to be said about the trauma imposed on people who are witness to a bank robbery, not to mention the potential lives hurt/lost if things go sour. I'm not saying in your above example that the 27mo and 10yr sentences should be shorter or longer, I'm just noting that there are reasons the two aren't equal.

You're right, they're not equal. The white collar crime is capable of so much more damage.

I think armed robbery sentences depend on whether it was the first time or this is far down the list of incidents (also rap sheet might have a history of other things), but a fist time non violent robber probably will not get ten years in the klink, though you could if the judge and prosecutor impose maximums.

Most states consider “no priors” in sentencing guidelines.

Fair point, but the penalties for white collar crime are still very lax even when "everyday" people are affected. Look at the last recession which led to many "average" american families losing their homes. That wasn't possible without fraud especially the ratings agencies that were giving out false ratings and still no one went to prison.

Yes I agree with you there. There are a whole host of blue collar crimes that have too high a penalty as well. I'm not saying don't change the sentences. Just noting the difference. I personally tried to convince multiple people that insider trading should be illegal and prosecuted (example of white collar crime that is hard to pinpoint someone who suffers directly). Between libertarian-minded people and very left-wing people, it's hard to convince some people I know that want to eliminate prisons (left) or regulations (libertarians), that we should be handing out penalties for certain things, let alone stiffer penalties. Prosecute fraud? I'm with you on that!

> If you are convicted of misdemeanor grand theft, you face up to 364 days in county jail and a maximum fine of $1,000. If you are convicted of felony grand theft, you face a sentence of 16 months, two or three years in county jail and maximum fine of $10,000[1]

[1] https://www.wklaw.com/theft-sentencing-punishment/

Theft (i.e. stealing without violence, as opposed to robbery) can still carry penalties of several years of prison.

>> rob a bank to steal $10,000

Lol. Those that do actually succeed in robbing a bank get away with far less than $10,000. There will be a dye pack if you grab anything more than what the cashier has in front of them. It is most often less than $1000.

This depends on how you rob the bank.

>get 27 months of home arrest

The only mention of home confinement in the OP is what the defense is asking for. The prosecution is asking for 27 months of imprisonment.

Yes true, although a big facet is the physical violence or threat thereof

The takeaway is to favor committing white collar crimes rather than blue collar.

One might say, spreading the IP so that it doesn't belong to a single monopoly is a good thing for the society in general - jail time for this sounds ridiculous.

Intent matters in criminal prosecution. I don't think his intention was social good.

Another thing to take in count - he didn't ruin anyone's life so his life shouldn't be ruined either.

There is no comparison to be made here. I know people who have been on the receiving end of a bank robbery and the trauma is long lasting. Is google traumatized by their experience? Do they tense up when someone walks into the office wearing a hat or a pair of sunglasses? These two crimes are very different things.

Edit: To those downvoting, do you honestly believe robbing a bank is a victimless crime? Someone has to be on the receiving end of that robbery and it is harmful to that person regardless of your feelings towards banks in general.

> $179MM of assets

Uh, that's only if you think they are worth $179M. I might be your competitor, think your software is crap, and worth $0 to me. This is a heavily subjective number.

$10000 in hard cash though is $10000 no matter how you look at it.

I do agree that white vs blue collar crime is an issue but I don't think that's the issue here.

On the other hand though I am dismayed at the fact that this guy is getting more jail time than rapists often get (e.g. Brock Turner). Although it's still a crime, I don't consider intellectual property crime to be that serious in the grand scheme of things. Intellectual property is not even real property to me, and real property is a far cry from human bodies.

That is absolutely true. But given that a competitor did pay for those assets, literally, then a market value for those assets was established.

If he had stolen the IP, and the acquiring company decided to pay $0 for it and not take it, then your assessment would be correct.

But a company decided that those assets were worth north of $100MM and paid for it.

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