Posted on 01/12/2002 3:41:13 AM PST by csvset
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:39:23 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
A federal prosecutor from San Francisco who specializes in white-collar crime was named by the U.S. Justice Department today to lead a task force conducting a criminal investigation of Enron Corp.
Leslie Caldwell, head of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco, was appointed to the new post by Assistant U.S. Attorney General Michael Chertoff.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Amen. I happened to hear NPR while channel surfing. They ran three Enron "stories", not once was a Democrat mentioned, other than Waxman (D-CA), as the driving force behind the investigation.
If the powers that were at Enron did break the law, they should be hammered. Don't white collar criminals usually get a slap on the wrist?
Accounting fraud uncovered in US high-tech sector (with pic)
"Previously, Caldwell said, her office waited for the SEC to refer cases for criminal investigation. But now, "we're taking the bull in our own hands," she said.
"The Arthur Andersen study of accounting restatements from 1997 to 2000 showed that 27 percent of the restatements nationwide had been filed in the software and computer industries. About 62 percent of the software companies involved had annual gross revenue of less than US$100 million.
The rise of accounting fraud investigations, specifically related to overstatement of revenue, reflects a serious white-collar crime trend in the high-technology sector in recent years, said Leslie Caldwell, chief of the securities fraud section for the US attorney's office here.
... There are a number of matters under investigation of corporations that cooked their books to meet Wall Street's expectations -- expectations that the companies themselves created," she added. "
She led N. Calif. antiterrorism task force formed after attacks.
One article refers to her as a "computer crime" expert, but I think she was more of a "computer company crime" expert because of her prosecution of dot.com financial fraud.
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