By Leah Germain, International News Services

So what does swindling investors out of US$65 billion get you these days? A 150-year prison sentence and a whole lot of bad publicity. Now from Bernie Madoff’s venerable standpoint, one-and-a-half centuries sounds like a painfully long sentence, especially if you are serving that time in a real American prison and not the infamous Club Fed, a low-security Florida prison facility reserved for white-collar criminals where 18 holes of golf and lobster cookouts are  rumored to be among the inmates’ daily activities.

Madoff, the New York based financial fraudster and Ponzi scheme specialist did of course admit 11 counts of fraud, money laundering and perjury. Some might argue that 150 years is too much, but he should be thankful that although the USA clings to capital punishment, it is not as widely used as it is in China. If he had committed the same crimes there he could well have faced a Chinese firing squad.
Although the death penalty is generally reserved for violent crimes such as murder, when large sums of money are stolen capital punishment can be authorised for nonviolent offences such as major financial fraud. Indeed, many major crimes considered to have a malicious social impact can be punishable by death – under the 1997 Criminal Law, there were 15 capital offences for ‘crimes undermining the socialist market economic order’ – including financial instrument frauds, letter of credit frauds, credit card frauds and counterfeiting currency. China’s former top drug regulator, Zheng Xiaoyu, was executed in July 2007 for taking bribes worth 6.5 million yuan (US$850,000) from eight different companies, for instance. In the same year, another Chinese businessman Wang Zhendong was served the death penalty after being caught selling overpriced ant farms to the public. His scheme involved selling cardboard boxes full of rare ants to investors, to whom he promised 60% returns. Over two years, Zhendong was able to scam 36,700 residents from two towns out of nearly US$400 million – small change for Bernie Madoff.
Recently, another financial charlatan was caught for swindling investors out of millions. In April of this year, Wu Ying, a 28-year-old beauty business mogul was arrested for allegedly cheating investors out of US$57 million. According to reports, she ran a pyramid scheme and was put on trial for financial fraud. Like the fraudsters before her, if found guilty, Wu could be executed by firing squad – although she may just be jailed.
While Madoff may spend the rest of his life in prison - he should perhaps spend some time considering his fate if he had lived in a country taking a much sterner attitude to ruining honest investors.