I respectfully beg to differ. I know Frank personally -- haven't seen him in 15 years, however -- and he is not what the media tries to portray himn as. I of course have not asked him if he is guilty but as for his character -- well, he is a fine man who rose from his modest Italian roots and worked his tail off. To claim he arrogantly ran around thinking he was better than the rest of us is wrong.
Don't forget -- he wasn't lining his pockets, or making corrupt deals, like Ivan Boesky of the 1980s; or the Milliken brothers of the 1990s. The SEB needed a scapegoat for the dot.com craze and all they could find was Frank and a single email. This is not like the far more egregious excesses of the past.
No one can deny his rags-to-riches-by-sweat-of-brow story.
But he clearly and overtly broke many laws and regs...ranging from IPO allocations-as-bribes (so-called "spinning") to the obstruction of justice by directing the destruction of emails. These are neither subtle nor ambiguous actions. They are not the mark of humble and honest man.
he wasn't lining his pockets
That's just not true. His comp was enormous.
As for his being nailed for a "small" item like the emails, recall, Al Capone went to prison not for murder or bootlegging, but for tax evasion, because that was all they could get him on.
Frank, who was no doubt a personable fellow, seriously corrupted the capital raising function in both fact and perception. He broke the law, and he called into question the efficacy of capitalistic decision processes in a time when people like Hillary are looking to further restrict our property rights. His actions put ALL of us at further risk of plunder.