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COMMENTS HAVE BEEN DISABLED

Because of spam, I personally moderate all comments left on my blog. However, because of health issues, I will not be able to do so in the future.

If you have a personal question about LI or any related topic you can send me an email at stevecarper@cs.com. I will try to respond.

Otherwise, this blog is now a legacy site, meaning that I am not updating it any longer. The basic information about LI is still sound. However, product information and weblinks may be out of date.

In addition, my old website, Planet Lactose, has been taken down because of the age of the information. Unfortunately, that means links to the site on this blog will no longer work.

For quick offline reference, you can purchase Planet Lactose: The Best of the Blog as an ebook on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. Almost 100,000 words on LI, allergies, milk products, milk-free products, and the genetics of intolerance, along with large helpings of the weirdness that is the Net.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

"Clearly a Case of Lactose Intolerance." Groan.

Who says judges don't have a sense of humor? Or does the credit/blame go to the columnist?

I don't know what to make John Goff's seriously deranged Good Week/Bad Week column over at CFO.com. But I'm going to quote a piece of it anyway.

In one of the most bizarre cases of corporate fraud in U.S. history — and that's saying something — the CEO and CFO of now-defunct cheese maker Suprema Specialties Inc. were indicted Monday on charges that they perpetuated a massive scam. The swindle? They didn't actually have any cheese at the cheese shop (cue bouzouki music). "Suprema was essentially an illusion as a business and a lie for investors," said U.S. Attorney Christopher "Chris" Christie at a press conference. "It was in business to provide a means for fraud. There's not even an SIC code for that."

According to reports, Mark Cocchiola, the 49-year-old founder of Suprema, and Steven Venechanos, the company's former chief financial officer, were charged in a 38-count federal court indictment. Charges include bank fraud, securities fraud, mail fraud, and ruminant fraud. In addition, at the arraignment on Wednesday, the two former executives both acknowledged that deep down, they feel like frauds. "We don't like cheese, or milk for that matter,' Venechanos told a judge. "We won't even sit at the same dinner table with a carton of milk." The judge later classified the fraud as a hate crime, telling defense attorneys "this is clearly a case of lactose intolerance."
The defendents were cowed by the judge. "I couldn't have herd him correctly," one of them later said. "He was milking it for the spectators," remarked a baliff. A court analyst pontificated, "No whey do they get a condensed sentence. It'll go sour for them. But that's what they get for skimming." Rimshot.

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1 comment:

Roberto Iza Valdés said...
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