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Financial Criminals in Contemporary and Modern Times: The Case of Scott Rothstein

Among the most notorious financial criminals in modern and contemporary times is the one that was conducted by Scott Rothstein, a former lawyer, who was eventually sentenced to 50 years in federal prison. Rothstein’s sentencing followed his use of his Fort Lauderdale law company to run a 1.2 billion dollars Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme, which brough him sports and yachts and permitted him to make significant contributions to politicians in Florida (Manning, 2018; Suzumura et al., 2019).

Rothstein’s Ponzi scheme, according to Maglich (2014), was perforated with highly confidential lawful settlements, offering investors chances of “purchasing” large lawful settlements at comparatively low rates that would reward them the entitlement to payments with greater benefits/returns. Nonetheless, that was not certainly the case. Furthermore, Rothstein, during the trials, admitted that he did run a scam that entailed selling shares in false lawsuit settlements, giving promises to investors that they would reap bountiful rewards if the cases were settled (McMahon et al., 2016; Ocansey, 2017; Díez & Herlin-Karnell, 2018).  Le Nguyen (2020) explained that Rothstein created phony settlement covenants and false bank documents to dupe investors. He, in a classic Ponzi scheme, employed funds for new investors to settle their old investors. Additionally, Rothstein gave huge sums of money to hospitals and charitable establishments (Gupta & Kumar, 2020).

In conclusion, Rothstein falsely gained his wealth by manipulating investors and giving them promises of better returns, returns that never came to be. As a result of his Ponzi scheme, Rothstein’s law firm collapsed and his associates, his wife included, were served with prison sentences.