Martha, Martha, Martha....

[ABSTRUSE]

Martha Stewart Sentenced to 5 Months

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Martha Stewart (news - web sites), who built a catering company into a media empire, was sentenced on Friday to five months in prison for lying about a suspicious stock sale.

Stewart, 62, who has stepped down as an officer and board member of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE:MSO - news), was found guilty in March of conspiracy, making false statements and obstruction of agency proceedings.


The judge also sentenced Stewart to two years of supervised release and ordered her to pay a fine of $30,000.


The case against Stewart stemmed from her suspicious sale of stock in biotech company ImClone Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:IMCL - news) on Dec. 27, 2001.


Prosecutors said the sale occurred after her stockbroker Peter Bacanovic ordered an assistant to tip Stewart that ImClone founder Sam Waksal was dumping all his ImClone shares, knowing federal regulators were about to give a thumbs down to the company's anti-cancer drug.


While there were no criminal charges accusing Stewart and Bacanovic of insider trading, prosecutors said they conspired to cover up the secret tip. Bacanovic is to be sentenced later on Friday.

 

[Guest]

its a good thing...


i want her to be my prison bitch..
atleast ill know my cots been made properly..


nice slap on the wrist.. now if only someone would do something about those enron fellows.. hrm!

 

[cloudy]

Will she actually serve those 5 months?

She annoys the hell out of me...

 

[cheerful_deviant]

Will she actually serve those 5 months?

She annoys the hell out of me...

I think she annoys the hell out of just about everyone.

 

[cantdog]

She is not loved, locally, I'm afraid.

I wonder if the "suspicious sale" netted seven times the amount of the fine or much more? Whatever. She can certainly afford it out of pocket, and will doubtless use her company money, not her own.

These people have a lot of difficulty with their meam and their tuam.

Supervised release.

I wonder how much that restricts one's travel from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It could be majorly inconvenient. Not as majorly as prison, which most thieves who steal felony amounts of money seem to get from the "tough on crime" bench.

But we mustn't have Martha making license plates or shoveling cowshit, now must we? Although her tailor could visit and adjust the orange jumpsuit.


The poor will be always with us, unless they're sentenced to years of hard time for stealing bread or sleeping under bridges. Rich people never seem to do those particular crimes, so the penalties can be steep.

 

[SnoopDog]

'Martha's cleaning the brass on the Titanic...it's all going down, man' - Tyler Durden

Snoopy,

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I don't like Matha Stewart. She deals in lifestyle pornography as far as I'm concerned, and worse than that, she has no sense of humor, which is a bigger crime in my book. But I hate prosecuters who try to make their names by screwing famous people even more. She really doesn't deserve this.

What they got her on was not stock manipluation or insider trading, but on initially lying to the government about what she'd done. Lying to the government! Like she's the only one who's ever done that.

Meanwhile I see that Ken Lay of Enron has only recently been indicted, and as far as I know Jeffrey Skilling, the former CEO, is still in the clear. It'll be interesting to see how much time they spend breaking rocks.

---dr.M.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

She is not loved, locally, I'm afraid.

I wonder if the "suspicious sale" netted seven times the amount of the fine or much more? Whatever. She can certainly afford it out of pocket, and will doubtless use her company money, not her own.

These people have a lot of difficulty with their meam and their tuam.

Supervised release.

I wonder how much that restricts one's travel from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It could be majorly inconvenient. Not as majorly as prison, which most thieves who steal felony amounts of money seem to get from the "tough on crime" bench.

But we mustn't have Martha making license plates or shoveling cowshit, now must we? Although her tailor could visit and adjust the orange jumpsuit.


The poor will be always with us, unless they're sentenced to years of hard time for stealing bread or sleeping under bridges. Rich people never seem to do those particular crimes, so the penalties can be steep.

I know Nfl players on supervised release can still travel with the team to play games. You are allowed to travel if you job calls for it.

As far as Martha goes, I don't see that she did anything wrong. If the federal government went after people who bilked millions & destroyed lives with a quarter of the fanatical zeal they went after marth with, Kenny boy wouldn't have been indited just a few days ago.

I don't know much about Martha & she can be annoying, but she wasn't artificially jacking up electricity prices. She didn't cause black outs to increase profit. She didn't loot her employee's retirement funds.

I believe in the rule of law. I also believe in applying it across the boards. in this case I believe her major crime was that she didn't contibute enough to someone's reelection campaign to be afforded protection, and that really irks me.

-Colly

 

[destinie21]

she annoys the hell out of me but seeing her do time while the enron guys get off is shitty.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

I agree, like her or not, she is not as evil as Enron. It's just more fun to prosecute celebrities.

 

[Clare Quilty]

'Martha's cleaning the brass on the Titanic...it's all going down, man' - Tyler Durden

Snoopy,

Fuck Martha Stewart! Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man.

You left out the "fuck Martha Stewart" part and that's my favorite bit.

 

[Shock Chick]

I think she annoys the hell out of just about everyone.

She doesn't annoy the hell out of me, I don't know who the fuck she is.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

She doesn't annoy the hell out of me, I don't know who the fuck she is.

she's the equivalent of Jane Asher.

 

[Guest]

Mab., you're as succinct as a girdle. Lifestyle porn and no sense of humour is spot on.

I saw MS on a Julia Child show making a wedding cake with hundreds of marzipan cherries that she sculpted and painted individually, including stems. Julia joked about the time involved and Martha could not crack a smile but only looked offended. Otherwise I've no opinion on her sentence, too much else to think on in my life.

Perdita

 

[Guest]

she's the equivalent of Jane Asher.

Eep!

Ok, thanks, I'll let Shocky know.

Lou

 

[Guest]

You left out the "fuck Martha Stewart" part and that's my favorite bit.

Eew, Quilty; I had no idea. P.

 

[Clare Quilty]

Eew, Quilty; I had no idea. P.

Of course, that's not what I mean. It is funny that you should quip to that effect. Very early in Martha's rise to fame, I had a thing for her. She was often the fodder for my WASPy, patrician, Connecticut dominatrix fantasies.

 

[Guest]

She was often the fodder for my WASPy, patrician, Connecticut dominatrix fantasies.

I'm so relieved. P.

 

[Clare Quilty]

I'm so relieved. P.

Yes. Nigella Lawson is now my masturbatory blue-blooded hostess with the mostess.

 

[Guest]

Nigella Lawson

Well, I just looked her up (so much easier to do now via Moz.) and got the picture. But a McDonald's ad came with it, too ironic. P.

 

[SnoopDog]

You left out the "fuck Martha Stewart" part and that's my favorite bit.

You're absolutely right.

Snoopy,

 

[Guest]

Transcript of Martha Stewart's Statement THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Text of Martha Stewart's statement outside the courthouse:

Today is a shameful day. It's shameful for me, and for my family, and for my beloved company, and for all of its employees and partners. What was a small personal matter came over the -- became over the last two years an almost fatal circus event of unprecedented proportions.

I have been choked and almost suffocated to death during that time, all the while more concerned about the well-being of others than for myself, more hurt for them and for their losses than for my own, more worried for their futures than the future of Martha Stewart the person.

More than 200 people have lost their jobs at my company as a result of this situation. I want them to know how very, very sorry I am for them and their families.

I would like to thank everybody who stood by me, who wished me well, waved to me on the street like these lovely people over here, smiled at me, called me, wrote to me. We received thousands of support letters, and more than 170,000 e-mails to marthatalks.com, and I appreciate each and every one of those pieces of correspondence. I really feel good about it.

Perhaps all of you out there can continue to show your support by subscribing to our magazine, by buying our products, by encouraging our advertisers to come back in full-force to our magazines.

Our magazines are great. They deserve your support, and whatever happened to me personally shouldn't have any effect whatsoever on the great company Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. And I don't want to use this as a sales pitch for my company, but we love that company, we've worked so hard on that company, and we really think it merits great attention from the American public.

And I'll be back. I will be back. Whatever I have to do in the next few months, I hope the months go by quickly. I'm used to all kinds of hard work, as you know, and I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid whatsoever. I'm just very, very sorry that it's come to this, that a small personal matter has been able to be blown out of all proportion, and with such venom and such gore, I mean it's just terrible.

We are going to appeal so I'm not going to talk about the case. ... I want to thank Bob Morvillo and his whole team for doing the very best job they could do in defending me.''

 

[CharleyH]

The judge also sentenced Stewart to two years of supervised release

Now there's good use of taxpayer dollars. WTF is she going to do? Mash someone's . . .

 

[Guest]

Ch., I think the idea of being "supervised" is the worst punishment for M. P.

 

[Guest]

because i had little choice i saw a glimpse of the lovely Ms. M and barbra wawa.. having a chat.

Ms. M says (this off the top of my head) something to the effect of:
its not like i took from the little people.. comparing what she did with Enron.


dont get me wrong, im grateful that she didnt take from the 'little people' and its not that i think she did a horrid injustice against humanity.. but if arrogance were measured by the pound.. Ms. M would be tragically obese.
2cents.

vella~