doodledee

I am *so* hooked on that Tyco trial stuff. It's way, way better than the Martha trial. In case you're not, here's what you've missed in a nutshell:

• In 2001, Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski bought a couple big money paintings. Big like $13M big. Instead of having them shipped to his NYC apartment, he pretended to have them shipped to the New Hampshire headquarters of Tyco because - brace yourself - New Hampshire doesn't have any sales tax. Sneaky! Trump no fire you Mr. Koz!
• Uh oh, the feds find out about Koz's sneaky tax avoidance! Feds investigate. Feds find out Kozlowski tampered with evidence. Feds find out he made his employees in New Hampshire sign for empty packages to make it look like the packages went to NH. Feds also find out Koz kicks puppies. Bad Koz.
• Feds dig in more. Feds find other goofy behavior besides expensive artwork schemes. They found out about how Kozlowski was given some seriously huge - like $100M in total huge - no-interest loans from the company. And how those loans were later forgiven as part of a 'bonus' plan. And maybe those 'bonus' plans were all good and maybe they weren't. Feds suspicious.
• More digging. Kozlowski and CFO buddy Mark Swartz also maybe lied about the company's finances. And maybe drove the stock up in the process. And - brace yourself again - maybe they sold a bunch of stock and maybe made hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. And maybe that was all good and maybe it wasn't.
• Feds indict Koz and Swartz on 32 counts of being jerks or something. Ouch.
• Trial starts late last year and is full of good dirt. Stories about spending $1M of company money on a huge birthday party for his wife where he flew Jimmy Buffet in to play for her and commissioned a frickin' ice sculpture of Michelangelo's David that had vodka coming out of it's pee-pee. Stories about $6000 shower curtains and luxurious 'company apartments'. Wee!

After 6 months of testimony the jury is finally in deliberation. It's not going well. Apparently one of the jurors is holding firm in her belief that Koz and Swartz aren't guilty and she's kind of being a beyotch about it. The jury sent a few notes out to the judge claiming the atmosphere in the jury room is 'poisonous' and that they weren't making progress. To top it all off, Ms. Beyotch sort-of kind-of made an 'ok' gesture to the defense team the other day.

Courtroom.frenzy()

Media.downshift(hysteria)

The craziest part is that many legal analysts think that Ms. Beyotch is probably right. The prosecutions case swings around the notion of criminal intent, and many doubt that they've proved it. Sure, Koz and Swartz are fist class crap bags, but that doesn't mean they necessarily broke the law.

Huh.

Judge Denies Mistrial in Tyco Case [myway] [today]
Jurors see tape of Kozlowski's party [cnn] [2003]
Kozlowski, Tyco face more questions [cnn] [2002]