Preparation for prison and life after release.
This is the last post describing Scott London’s interview during a four-hour CPE session on June 26. The first post explained the goal of this series is to organize a number of comments in the session. The course was presented by The Pros & The Cons.
This post will cover preparation for prison, life afterwards, and another earned consequence.
Preparation for prison
When asked, Mr. London said he is spending a lot of time with family and friends before he reports to prison.
He has spent time talking to people whose business is coaching people to prepare for incarceration. He laughed and said who knew there was such a niche industry.
He is also getting his family ready for his absence.
I can picture what that would look like. Typically husbands and wives split the household duties. Since he is a CPA, I am guessing he took care of the family’s finances. Think of all the things he needs to coach his wife on.
Explaining what to expect for the contracts that only appear once a year such as all the different insurance policies, the home warranty, safe deposit boxes, and all the other little things that go into a modern life. Writing down passwords and account numbers to all the online places.
Showing her how to do things like replace the filter on the furnace and replace the a/c fuses if they blow.
He said he is reasonably well prepared.
Life after prison
He indicated he is 51 now and will be 52 when released. He is too young to retire. He has lost his license for at least three years and thinks he can reapply after that point.
As an aside, I hope he doesn’t get his hopes up too high about getting his license back.
He knows he won’t be working in any financial capacity for any company registered with the SEC.
He says he still has lots of things he can do. He has expertise in human resources, technical accounting, managing people, and mentoring.
He again made a comment he has been quoted as making in public before: he will do what it takes to provide for his family.
Smart aleck commenters over at Going Concern suggest he will hit the speaker circuit and make a fortune. I mention that just to make note of their predictions.
Let’s ponder that for a moment – replacing a $650K (his public comments) or $900K (various speculation) salary would require a lot of speeches. Let’s assume $3k or $5K each speech. That would be somewhere between 130 (650/4) and 300 (900/3) speeches a year. In a 50 week year, that would be an average of between 2.6 and 6 speeches a week. Not likely.
Other consequence – loss of colleagues
Mr. London indicated he was a key mentor to coach and build up ten or a dozen people who moved into partnership. All those relationships went away in one day, he said.
Imagine the professional joy you would feel from having taken fifty or a hundred professionals under your wing and investing in them to the point that helped a dozen of them grow into Big 4 partners. In addition to all the other things you have done for the firm, you have grown staff to be the present and future leaders of the firm. That would produce deep pride of accomplishment in any CPA.
Now imagine never again being able to talk to those dozen people because they are under explicit instruction to not have any contact with you.
Add that to the list of earned consequences.
Here is a list of the posts in this series:
- Part 1 – context for this series; how did the insider trading scheme develop
- Part 2 – the payoff; a quiet time
- Part 3 – the sting; was the sting necessary
- Part 4 – the worst day of his life
- Part 5 – motivation
- Part 6 – other comments
- Part 7 – prep for prison and life afterwards – the post you are reading