Should The Jerrkoff Go Directly to Jail?

Apple has been doing an amazing job protecting its CEO, but with its ex-CFO pointing the finger solidly at Steve Jobs and the ex-general counsel expected to do the same, the base of information now seems to support civil -- and probably even criminal -- action against him.

So, assuming the various folks are mostly telling the truth -- which Jobs' defense team would likely challenge -- Steve Jobs publicly took US$1 a year as salary, but he was receiving millions for his private jet and big blocks of options. At Jobs' direction -- and after receiving advice from the CFO that he not do this -- he caused falsified documents to be drawn up, which allowed him to get options that were then not properly reported.

The stock price of Apple fell below the strike price for the options, and they were canceled and replaced by options which, because the stock price continued to fall, were also underwater -- and eventually they were replaced by stock worth nearly $100 million. The only things in contention are who ordered the falsified documents to be created and whether Jobs knew about it.

Now, I'm making this look a lot more simple than it actually is, but let's add to this the fact that many, if not most, people currently believe Apple couldn't survive without Jobs (I would probably include Apple's board with this group), and that with Al Gore on the board, any action against Apple by a Republican executive branch could be positioned as dirty politics and made part of what will likely be an incredibly nasty presidential election.

Now, while the damages to stockholders could be in the tens of millions of dollars, pulling Jobs out of the company could result in lost income in the billions. Finally, Steve Jobs is already playing this out in the media and has already apparently hired Mark Pomerantz, a top criminal attorney (he represented Frank Quattrone successfully), to represent him. That increases the odds that he will either get off on a technicality or receive what amounts to a hand slap.

This makes for a rather ugly decision for the federal attorney who has to prosecute the case. If I were in that position, I wouldn't do anything until after the trial of Apple's ex-chief counsel is over. Then, I would either hope that enough information came out of that trial to make the decision easier, or hope to be reassigned before Jobs would have to be charged. The delay might also get me past the elections; handling this outside of an election year would seem vastly easier.

This issue does not reflect on Apple products or whether you should buy from the company, but it is interesting to watch. What do you think the federal attorney should do? What would you do? How we answer that question probably says a lot about our ethics, and how well we balance risks and rewards.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/57134.html