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Legal

Law and Order – Cupertino

I have watched enough TV to know that when you catch a small fish you offer them a deal and get them to flip on the ring leader. Fred Anderson took a deal and has certainly implicated Mr. Jobs in the public statement issued by his attorney. It appears that Nancy Heinen will be taking her chances in the courtroom and she has a lot more to lose than Fred Anderson. Will she plead out and testify against Mr. Jobs or follow the code of omerta?
How did this happen? Apple management awarded themselves something like US$100M in options and then picked earlier strike dates that allowed them to say it was less, let’s say $80M. Management performance had been stellar and US$20M amounts to just peanuts when you look at the profits and performance this team delivered. If these laws were written in order to protect shareholders, where is the harm in all this?
Well, presumably they also told Uncle Sam the same story at tax time. Now I am only a “contributing” editor here at the PowerPage, but for the sake of argument, let us say that Jason started paying me US$100K a year to write this drivel. If I told the IRS it was only US$80K, where would the harm be in that? And if I did that a thousand years in a row, it would amount to just about the same thing. If subpoenaed and asked to testify at Nancy Heinen’s upcoming trial, I would suggest Mr. Jobs have a sit-down with Martha Stewart to find out what it’s like to do hard time or whatever sort of time it is you do in minimum security.


I have watched enough TV to know that when you catch a small fish you offer them a deal and get them to flip on the ring leader. Fred Anderson took a deal and has certainly implicated Mr. Jobs in the public statement issued by his attorney. It appears that Nancy Heinen will be taking her chances in the courtroom and she has a lot more to lose than Fred Anderson. Will she plead out and testify against Mr. Jobs or follow the code of omerta?
How did this happen? Apple management awarded themselves something like US$100M in options and then picked earlier strike dates that allowed them to say it was less, let’s say $80M. Management performance had been stellar and US$20M amounts to just peanuts when you look at the profits and performance this team delivered. If these laws were written in order to protect shareholders, where is the harm in all this?
Well, presumably they also told Uncle Sam the same story at tax time. Now I am only a “contributing” editor here at the PowerPage, but for the sake of argument, let us say that Jason started paying me US$100K a year to write this drivel. If I told the IRS it was only US$80K, where would the harm be in that? And if I did that a thousand years in a row, it would amount to just about the same thing. If subpoenaed and asked to testify at Nancy Heinen’s upcoming trial, I would suggest Mr. Jobs have a sit-down with Martha Stewart to find out what it’s like to do hard time or whatever sort of time it is you do in minimum security.