A coffee mug in exchange for an appointment.
A lunch coupon in exchange for an appointment.
A USB flash drive in exchange for intelligence about the company.
A "chance" at an iPad in exchange for filling out a 12 page survey.
These just don't cross any reasonable risk/reward threshold.
Did this person get offered multiple years of their salary, or did they not do any thinking at all?
$500,000 seems like probably a little less than one year salary for a Netflix VP. But then again people have been known to engage in fraud for much less.
All told, I wouldn't be surprised if he banked tens of millions over his career before getting caught.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/health/research/19beha.ht...
> A study reports that students from a medical school where such gifts are allowed had a more favorable attitude toward a cholesterol drug than did students from a school where they are banned.
> Although hospitals have long discussed what restrictions to place on the more valuable offerings lavished by drug companies, the researchers, whose study appears in The Archives of Internal Medicine, suggest that no gift is too small.
edit: I'm thinking of practices like the one referred to in the nyt article -- gift-giving to doctors by drug manufacturers. The top-level comment that started this chain did talk about items offered as part of a direct exchange, which is different.
Short answer: The AG made it much harder to do that sort of thing.
They do something similar with “terrorists”. They find someone, tell them “push this button to blow up everyone”, and then charge them with terrorism.