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  • 2011-10-19 (xsd:date)
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  • Did a Hungry Homeless Man Who Stole $100 Receive a Far Heavier Sentence Than a White-Collar Thief? (en)
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  • In 2011 the tale of two men in their mid-fifties with very different life circumstances attracted the attention of Internet users who juxtaposed their stories as an example of the disparity with which a wealthy, white-collar criminal was treated versus a homeless man who robbed a bank, but ultimately only took $100 because he was desperate and hungry. In 2011, Paul R. Allen, 55, of Oakton, Virginia, was sentenced to 40 months in prison after being convicted of fraud for participating in a $2.9 billion scheme that caused the mortgage and lending firm Taylor, Bean & Whitaker to go under. Two years earlier, Roy Brown, 54, a homeless African-American man, was sentenced to 15 years without the possibility of parole for robbing a bank in Shreveport, Louisiana. According to the scant reporting on the story, Brown only took $100 from the stack handed to him and told the teller he needed it because he was homeless and hungry. The two stories, of a CEO given a relatively lenient sentence for his involvement in a multi-billion dollar fraud scheme versus the homeless man who only took $100 from a bank, were compared — albeit with little detail: There seems to be only one news account documenting the incident that landed Brown in prison: We were able to confirm Brown pleaded guilty to first degree robbery on 14 January 2009 and was sentenced to 15 years hard labor without the possibility of probation, parole or suspension of sentence, according to the Caddo Parish court clerk's office. Brown is currently housed at Madison Parish Detention Center until the end of his sentence in 2022. According to a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, Brown has the possibility for work release in 2018, meaning if granted he can leave detention to work during daytime hours. The news article about Brown does not mention factors such as prior convictions which may have affected Brown's sentence. (In Louisiana, the crime of first degree robbery — the taking of something of value when the offender does not have a weapon, but leads the victim to believe that he does have a weapon — carries a minimum sentence of 3 years to a maximum of 40 years.) We are working to obtain records containing further details about his case. Allen was sent to prison for his part in aiding and abetting the efforts of TBW's former chairman, Lee B. Farkas, to defraud the U.S. Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP): Mitigating factors in Allen's sentencing were the fact that the fraud was already underway when he became CEO of TBW in 2003, that his crime was a non-violent one, and that Allen was one of six persons who received credit on their sentences for cooperating with investigators and testifying against Farkas, the mastermind of the fraud scheme. (Farkas himself was sentenced to thirty years in prison.) (en)
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