Wampum

As you have probably heard by now, Enron Executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted on multiple felony counts. There will be much discussion about their roles inthe collapse of Enron, but one lesson is already clear. The Post reports:

A federal jury today convicted former Enron chairman Kenneth L. Lay of each of the six counts with which he was charged and convicted his protege Jeffrey K. Skilling of 19 of 28 counts, holding the top executives accountable for fraud on their watch.

The jury returned to the courtroom after deliberating for fewer than six days over a trial that took almost four months, avoiding making eye contact with the two defendants and their families. After the verdicts were read, Judge Simeon T. Lake III also found Lay guilty of four counts of bank fraud...

Skilling, 52, and Lay, 64, once stood near the pinnacle of American business, as the energy trading powerhouse they created out of a stodgy pipeline company grew to become the nation's seventh largest public company. But their fortunes collapsed in a heap along with the business in December 2001.

Now the two men, who together invested close to $70 million in their defense, face the possibility of spending the rest of their lives in prison and living in history as the ringleaders of a fraud at a company whose name became synonymous with accounting tricks and rule-breaking.

The lesson is clear. They should have hired me to defend them. I would have lost and charged no more than $50 million.