Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, Fabulous Fab Found Liable

Goldman Sachs mid-level minion Fabrice Tourre was found Civilly liable for fraud related to mortgage backed securities:

A federal jury found former Goldman Sachs executive Fabrice Tourre liable Thursday for duping investors about a shoddy mortgage deal on the eve of the housing market’s crash, the first major court victory for the Securities and Exchange Commission in its quest to hold Wall Street accountable for the 2008 financial crisis.

After two days of deliberation, the jury decided Tourre — best known by his “Fabulous Fab” nickname — was liable for six of the seven claims pursued by the SEC. The agency had accused the 34-year-old Frenchman of defrauding investors out of $1 billion by selling them a financial product that was secretly designed to fail.

The trial was one of the few to emerge from the financial crisis, and it cast Tourre as a symbol of Wall Street greed. Only twice before has the SEC brought individuals to trial in cases related to the crisis, and each time ended with lackluster results. The victory this time around is a boon for the agency, which is often criticized as a risk-averse regulator that shies away from court battles in favor of slap-on-the-wrist settlements.

Tourre was only a mid-level executive at Goldman — not a marquee Wall Street figure, some legal experts noted. Still, the morale boost is likely to build momentum inside the agency as it pursues one of its most prominent targets yet: hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen. Last month, the agency charged Cohen with failing to properly supervise two employees who engaged in insider trading, a case that could potentially end the industry tycoon’s storied career.

Note that there is no possibility of jail time, just a fine, that will be paid after what will likely be endless appeals.

So no real possibility of  getting to testify against higher up.

There are two bits in the article that are particularly important in understanding this:

“You would think the SEC convicted the Al Capone of Wall Street today when all it did was scapegoat a single mid-level Goldman Sachs’ trader who bragged in emails to his girlfriend,” Dennis Kelleher, chief executive of a nonprofit group called Better Markets, said in a statement.

John C. Coffee Jr., a professor at Columbia Law School, said a question still remains: “Why didn’t they go after someone important and not this sacrificial lamb?”

………

Jacob Frenkel, a former SEC enforcement lawyer and former federal prosecutor, said the SEC’s victory came just in time. The five-year statute of limitations is running out on cases from the time of the financial crisis.

So,this is not a beginning, this is an end, and as that it is almost less than nothing, because it allows the banksters and Their Evil Minions^™ can point to this, and claim that not everyone skated, even though all they got was a 28 year French number cruncher.

Damn.