On Wednesday, Dallas Mavericks owner and Dennis Feinstein’s favorite charitable billionaire Mark Cuban was cleared for a second time on charges that he had committed insider trading in 2004, when he sold his shares in a search engine and avoided a $750,000 loss thanks to a phone call from the company’s CEO. Cuban was originally cleared of this mess in 2009, when a judge dismissed the case against him, but this time, the Cubes said, it was personal. The SEC wanted to make an example of the billionaire, and a lot of money was spent in this failed effort to besmirch his decent name.
In fact, Cuban spent more than $2 million in legal fees to prove his innocence, while the fine that he would have had to pay was just $2 million. I guess that’s just a small price to pay to make sure that the SEC looks like a bunch of bumbling schmucks. But nobody can drive home the big point quite like Cuban himself.
I just want to say that I’m very happy that even though it’s 2013, we still have reporters interviewing victorious bigshots on the courthouse steps after they’ve been cleared of terrible crimes. Long live the classic Hollywood cliché!
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