Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes: How Following Orders Can be the Wrong Choice

Despite the fact that Harold played a minor role in the Petters fraud, he still was sentenced to 366 days in federal prison. According to the Harold’s plea agreement:

Those notes had borne 180 day maturities, but the defendant learned that they would now have 270 day maturities.

Because the defendant is a professional accountant, he must have realized that this extension meant there were problems with the performance of PCI.

The defendant also knew that Lancelot’s investment portfolio was almost entirely made up of PCI promissory notes, and could therefore have drawn the obvious conclusion about what problems with PCI’s financial performance would mean for Lancelot.

 “Harold Katz also played a minor role in this offense. He was the person who had the technical financial skills that were needed to carry out Greg Bell’s decision to cover up the state of PCI’s finances with round trip transactions.”