Prior to Madoff and the market collapse in 2008, white collar crime did not carry long sentences. Read 'Den of Thieves', Michael Milken, the junk bond king who made billions, got a year in prison and paid a $100 million dollar fine. Now he is regarded as a hot shot philanthropist and is on TV all the time but he stole billions of dollars from people.

Madoff/Bear Stearns kind of changed everything in terms of sentencing. Now you can expect to get 20 years and the government still has a hard on for these types of crimes.

I have heard people have been doing this real estate thing, offering to bail out distressed home owners and stealing their home outright or giving them loans with conditions that the borrower can never meet and then foreclosing.