Judges have to go by sentencing guidelines from the legislature in many cases.

I have to admit that I am a little insensitive to people that defraud other people out of money. They will rip off a 85 year old widow living check to check on SS as fast as they would rip off some Walk Street hotshot that legally defraud money. Their sense of justice is fucked up.

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/sep/08/fraud-convict-gets-nine-years-in-prison-despite-te/

Tony Thompson (the guy who just got thrown in a Federal Medical Center for the rest of his useless life), Derrick Fincher and John Nixon came to my corporation, a film studio group in Montana and a land developer in North Carolina with these great-sounding propositions: in our case, they'd get a $6 million line of credit if we gave him $160,000 in seed money and let him use our golf course and resort for the event. He'd bring Magic Johnson in and pay him a $750,000 appearance fee, he'd bring the band Alabama in, he'd bring up all these celebrities from LA to play in the tournament, and we could sell tickets and donate the money to charity. That all sounds great, except that he either couldn't or wouldn't deliver. (He could figure out how to get rid of $160,000, though.) The Montana film group was promised a $17 million line of credit to build a studio for a $300,000 payment, and he didn't follow through on that either. Not sure how bad the NC folks got screwed, but it must have been substantial; they took over $2 million in ill-gotten gains and the two west-coast groups were only relieved of $460,000.

It gets better: our company president is a good person and decided to do the tournament anyway because we'd promised the Community Cancer Fund the money, not getting it wasn't their fault, and we "know people who know people" so finding celebrities who wouldn't mind jumping on a plane with their golf clubs for a weekend is pretty easy. (John Travolta's sisters do their Christmas Show every year in our ballroom.) The first one brought in about $3 million, so we made it an annual event. We've done four of them and the CCF is $14 million richer.

If you cannot do the time....