A Snowy Saturday’s Epilogue, On Dr. Frost — And Opko — And… Serial Penny-Ante Securities Frauds Penalties…

Ahem. For most of us mere mortals, having to pay back ten times the amount we made in illicit profits from a “pump and dump” stock trading fraud scheme, would be a meaningful deterrent. [It is alleged (by the SEC) that together, Opko and Dr. Frost illicitly profited by about $550,000, in joining Messrs. Honig and O’Rourke — in the latter’s penny stock market manipulations.]

That is, an SEC assessed penalty of $5.6 million would deter most of us.

But — I would argue — not so, Dr. Frost.

An aside first, though — it is truly baffling (to me) that an otherwise smart guy, with over a billion dollars in net worth, and various prominent Miami Beach charitable/social connections at stake, would engage in what is literally “street crime“. Did he do it because he thought he’d never be caught? (If so, then maybe he’s not so bright, after-all.)

Did he do it because he “needed” a mere half a million more? (That’s less than one-two thousandths of his fortune. . . again, is he not… so bright, as so many previously wrongly surmised?)

Or did he do it… most likely because (like Trump)… he feels he’s entitled… to cheat small investors out of their lives’ savings — as a master of (at least) the Miami universe?

Maybe he is — like Trump — simply a morally corrupt human, at his core. Or maybe (least plausibly, in my experienced view) he was wholly snookered by the ever-charming Messrs. O’Rourke and Honig. [That, after the video tape in the ER with his lawyer, from 2014 or so, seems the least likely of all.]

We may never know. But to my main (and thankfully… concluding) point here (briefly made) — it is nearly impossible for the SEC to fashion appropriate remedies that also deter in cases like his. And like Elizabeth Holmes‘… and Martin Shkreli‘s cases — we are left to wonder whether any legal process could truly serve justice to such morally corrupt and vacuous (albeit wealthy) people. [Though most recently, in Shkreli’s case, the remedy is coming pretty close to depriving him of a meaningful future, it seems. So, maybe we just need some… patience.]

Yes — it sickens me to see Dr. Frost get off so very lightly, for what was clearly a long pattern of very calculating frauds, over several years, and several very public companies — but the US Constitution is a barrier to imposing a truly significant fine, in his particular case. [An eighth amendment version problem.]

So, as with Trump — we will simply have to suffer him a bit longer, as with these other odious buffoons who’ve (largely by standing on the shoulders of other giants’ genius), become very wealthy. They cannot die off soon enough, in my eye.

They are, in many ways, beyond the reach of the ordinary law — and its rules. [But perhaps not so Trump, as he assumed a position of very public trust. He may yet be brought to heel, by “Bobby Three Sticks”.]

Onward — into a lustrously snowy new year here — come Monday night.