Top Financial Villains: Biggest White Collar Criminals

Top 20 Financial Villains of All Time

Bernie Madoff needs no introduction. A man who lost $50 billion in investment funds through blatantly fraudulent activity, his lies and manipulation have harmed thousands of lives irreparably. His schemes may cause federal probing into the workings of hedge funds, unearthing more corporate culprits who used Madoff to create profits through illicit means.

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"In the 16 years since his release from prison, disgraced junk-bond king Michael Milken has beaten prostate cancer, raised hundreds of millions of dollars for medical research and reshaped an image tarnished by a 1990 conviction for securities fraud," according to the Los Angeles Times. At the same time, this former king pin of Wall Street embodied the epitome of corporate greed that flourished during the '80s, which seemed to place making money above any moral expedient. Milken served in prison from March 1991 to January 1993 and paid $650 million in fines for the felonies of stock parking and stock manipulation.

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Former CEO and chairman of Enron Kenneth Lay was convicted on 10 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy for the now infamous scandal that not only brought down his firm, but also cost 20,000 former Enron employees their jobs and lost investors billions of dollars. The Enron episode was also another nail in the coffin of the public's trust in corporations act in the best interest of the communities that depend on them. Lay died on July 5, 2006 before his sentencing scheduled for October could take place.

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Former CEO of Tyco International L. Dennis Kozlowski was convicted in 2005 of spending more than $400 million of his company's money to support a high-flying luxury lifestyle. Kozlowski spent $1 million alone on a birthday party for his wife at the time, pretending the party was a shareholder meeting to justify the cost to Tyco. Kozlowski maintains his innocence, claiming that none of the spending was hidden and that all his compensation, however extravagant, was approved by the company. He is currently serving eight years and four months to 24 years in prison for misappropriation of Tyco funds.

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Alan Bond (not pictured in this illustration) was sentenced in September of 2002 for cheating clients of his financial services out of millions of dollars. An Ivy League graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard Business School, this popular Wall Street figure had been featured as a Black Enterprise expert at the magazine's events and on prominent television shows. Through his criminal mismanagement of client funds, many hard-working employees of large institutions were cheated out of the opportunity to grow their pension money. When a member of the financial upper class steals the honestly-earned income of the middle class while professing to offer a service, you know you found one of the most morally corrupt crooks you can find.

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Jeff Skilling was the CEO of the Enron Corporation in 2001. (At that time, Lay stilled served as chairman.) On May 25, 2006, he was convicted of 28 felony counts including conspiracy, insider trading, making false statements to auditors, securities fraud and insider trading. Skilling was sentenced to 24 years and 4 months for his crimes and fined $45 million. He is currently serving his term, and is facing a resentencing. Will he be given a new chance at a shorter sentence after flagrantly cooking his company's books and losing investors billions? Unfortunately, it looks like up to nine years will be shaved off his sentence.

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Charles Keating, Jr. is remembered not-so-fondly as the poster "boy" of the savings and loan scandal that rocked the financial world in the late '80s. Now 85, Keating served four and one half years for multiple state and federal charges of fraud, racketeering, conspiracy related to the fraudulent mismanagement of the American Continental Corporation and the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. Of particular note is the fact that Keating encouraged 23,000 bank clients, many retired people. to pour their savings into securities his company created, knowing they were extremely risking without explaining the risk to his customers, a nasty business move. The convictions were overturned in 1996, but the government bail out necessitated by Keating's act cost American citizens $3.4 billion in taxpayer dollars.

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Kevin Ingram was a high-flying financier with a Stanford MBA when he was arrested in 2001 for laundering money for terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden. "A protégé of former U.S. Treasury secretary Robert Rubin and one of the financial world's rising stars," Ingram was convicted in July of the same year, just 52 days before the infamous 9-11 attacks.

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Joseph Jett was at the center of one of the biggest bond scandals in history. Once a star trader, Jett recorded massive profits while at Kidder Peabody by exploiting a flaw in the firms accounting system, when in actuality he had lost the firm $300 million. When Jett's manipulations came to light in 1994, the resulting bad press led the parent company of the firm, GE, to sell Kidder Peabody to Paine Webber. After being sold, the name Kidder Peabody was dropped, and the brand was history. Jett may not have harmed many investors directly, but he did single-handedly bring down a company with a 130-year history. In the realm of finance infamy, such an act earns pretty high points. Although he was fined, barred for life from financial trading and forced to pay restitution in 2004 by the SEC, Jett maintains that he did nothing wrong.

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Ivan Boesky is famous for saying: "I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself." This flagrant attitude drove him to participate in the shocking insider trading scandals of the '80s, in which he and his cohorts used tips to buy stocks in total disregard for market trading laws. After his conviction for making $200 million through illegal trades, Boesky was fined $100 million, served two years in prison and has been barred from working in the securities industry for life. What Boesky did was undermining to the entire system of trading stocks, because insider tips unfairly tip the scales in favor of those with the information – thus cheating the all the market players of the chance to "place their bets" fairly. Hopefully, by getting caught and being fully prosecuted, Boesky's case has deterred Wall Street insiders from using the special knowledge they have of the marketplace from taking advantage of a market intended to serve all.

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