Article: ‘Does the punishment fit the crime?’

Article - Media, Publications

‘Does the punishment fit the crime?’

Tatiana Walk-Morris, 14 April 2021

In 2018, William Thomas C. was caught with 18 pounds of cannabis a few days after returning home from vacation with his grandchildren. He was charged with cannabis trafficking and manufacturing or delivering more than 5,000 grams of cannabis, according to court records. Before then, William, better known as Tom, ran a family farm and a lawn care business in Bloomington, Illinois. Since Tom has been serving a nine-year sentence at Centralia Correctional Center, his sister Tara C. has managed his businesses and talks with him several times a week.

Tara, who asked for her last name to be withheld to preserve her career, said Tom suffered a terrible motorcycle accident several years ago and turned to marijuana to help with his pain management as an alternative to prescription medications. During Tom’s trial, his family had to sell assets to pay for his attorney’s fees. But following his conviction, Tara reached out to the Last Prisoner Project, a Denver-based nonprofit which advocates for the freedom and welfare of people imprisoned for cannabis convictions, to help free Tom. Continue reading “Article: ‘Does the punishment fit the crime?’”

Article: Feds charge billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s hedge fund SAC Capital with insider trading

Article - Media, Publications

Feds charge billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s hedge fund SAC Capital with insider trading

BARBARA ROSS and BILL HUTCHINSON, 26 July 2013

Wall Street’s richest hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, owned by billionaire Steven Cohen, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges of being an insider-trading machine. Prosecutors charge that SAC made “hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profits” from 1999 to 2010 by recruiting employees based on trade secrets they brought to the firm, or if they had the know-how to get them.

The scheme “was substantial, pervasive and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge-fund industry,” the indictment charges. Continue reading “Article: Feds charge billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s hedge fund SAC Capital with insider trading”

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