David Brooks
Posted on 10/28/2007 2:49:08 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Scandalous $10 Million Bat Mitzvah
David Brooks of DHB Industries Arrested for Embezzling Company Funds
Oct. 27, 2007 —
The headliners read like a who's who of music: Aerosmith, 50 Cent and Don Henley of the Eagles.
No, it wasn't the Grammys, it was 13-year-old Elizabeth Brooks' birthday party -- a $10 million mega bat mitzvah. Aerosmith alone was paid a $1 million to perform -- flown in on her father's company jet.
Her father is David Brooks, who was then the CEO of DHB Industries, the leading body armor provider to U.S. soliders in Iraq. And he had his company pick up the tab for the party two years ago, according to investigators.
This week, the former CEO was indicted on 21 counts of alleged securities fraud, insider trading, tax evasion and obstruction of justice. Authorities say he inflated his company stock and bilked his firm out of tens of millions of dollars to bankroll his fairy tale lifestyle.
"Right off the bat, he's going to have a problem with the jury that's going to be able to comprehend spending $10 million on a bat mitzvah, when most people won't ever see $10 million in their lifetime," defense attorney Joe Tacopino said.
Brooks is accused of getting his company to pay for his ex-wife's facelift, a $200,000 Bentley, and even a $100,000 belt buckle.
The criminal charges center around the claim that Brooks cashed in $185 million worth of stock just before the New York Police Department recalled 6,000 of his company's defective vests.
Tests showed that a quarter of the Interceptor vests worn by New York's finest were defective.
"This is another form of corporate irresponsibility, of where corporate officers knowingly ship defective products in order to boost the revenue of the company to benefit themselves financially," shareholders' attorney Bill Lerach told ABC's Brian Ross in 2002.
In 2004, DHB Industries was awarded a $200 million contract to provide body armor to the U.S. military for soldiers fighting on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But in May of 2005, the Marine corps announced a recall of more than 5,000 DHB Industries vests as government tests showed the critical life-threatening flaws.
If convicted, Brooks could spend rest of his life in jail.
I’ll be surprised if he gets much of a sentence. People like him can afford lawyers who are able to make sweet deals for their clients where they avoid doing more than 1-2 years.
http://frauddigest.com/index.php
Look, I’m all for capitalism, and the principle that within broad limits, you should be able to spend your money any way you like, even on hiring a roster of celebrity musicians for your daughter’s bat mitzvah that’s eclectic to the point of overkill...but even if he’d spent his own ten mill instead of the company’s, it WAS overkill. (And again...what? David Lee Roth wasn’t available?)
I disagree, he should be given a fair trial then hung.
He was plundering the company AND failing to get the job done. I think I can generate enough anger to cover both.
You're posting in a forum where folks believe that capitalism works better than anything else ever tried. Folks who understand that the driving force of capitalism is enlightened self-interest. Without that motivator, workers don't do their best work, and innovators aren't going to toil away in hopes of having the next great idea or solving the next great puzzle.
Take UAVs, for example. They're already revolutionizing the battlespace in Iraq and Afghanistan (and, at least once, in Yemen). They're going to change warfare in ways we can scarcely imagine. Do you really think an aerospace company would sink all those R&D costs if there weren't some gold at the end of the raibow, if they couldn't hope for better than break-even?
Yes, there is such a thing as price gouging. There is such a thing as war profiteering. They are despicable acts, and ought to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. What's gouging, and what's a fair profit? I can't define it precisely, at least at this hour. More knowledgeable folk than I can decide where to draw the line.
No profiteering doesn't mean no profit. Wartime manufacturing brought back to life plants idled by the Depression. Government money went to expand plants -- capacity the companies kept when the war ended. When Singer stopped making machine guns and went back to sewing machines, it was in shiny new plants with state-of-the-art machine tools, courtesy of Uncle Sam.
The little guy made out okay, too. We were way past full employment -- by past, I mean we were recruiting a bunch of riveting Rosies who previously hadn't been considered part of the labor pool. Everyone who wanted a job had one. Farmers could sell as much as they could grow.
Scientists and engineers got generous grants to pursue useful technologies. Some of which, like the "Spruce Goose," turned out the be dead ends; some of which, like the Manhattan Project, were real horkin' expensive, but turned out to be crucial.
If in this new war, most of the populace isn't being asked to sacrifice, whose fault is that? I'd direct your gaze to 1600 Penn. Ave., Washington DC, home of the belief that you can have guns and butter AND tax cuts. The White House told our soldiers to go into battle and told us to go to the mall.
WE ARE AT WAR... Are the efforts of our brave troops somehow less because they aren't in this for profit? War time is different than peace time.
Shout it across the Potomac and the Anacostia. It ain't the folks here who need that message. It's the folks inside the beltway.
:}
profit and profiteering are two different things.
David Brooks
Why stop at company profits? Wages of all employees working in all industries that supply needed materials should get evaluated & adjusted down to allow purchase of bare necessities...
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