The US definitely has an extradition treaty with South Korea so if they're in the US it's certainly possible. Of course, it's quite possible they've already fled and set up a new life in a country that won't extradite them while stashing their ill-gotten gains in a Swiss bank account.
they committed a crime, the korean prosecutors would have gotten their assets in Switzerland freezed by now if they had any.
I don't understand why people think that a swiss bank account is somehow secret. The banks know who their clients are and if the federal prosecutors receives a request they will freeze the assets during the investigation. They do this all the time during italian mafia investigations happening in Italy.
Look at delaware, the channel islands, the carribean and the pacific if you're looking for dirty money.
Also don't forget that you're talking about an US citizen.
FATCA means that there are no secrets for the US tax authorities. It also means that swiss banks refuse to take the money of any american citizen that is not living in Switzerland (and in some cases even if he does) because of the bureaucratic obstacles and legal insecurity.
Thank you. This stupid Swiss banks bashing is ridiculously. Delaware has much worse laws meaning you would be better of going there to do illegal stuff than Swiss Banks. So yeah stop annoying other countries and fucking first clean up your own mess at home!
The Swiss bashing may not be justified TODAY, but if you act as a parasite on world society, don't be surprised if your parasitic reputation persists for many years. The Swiss government passed the law of 1934 which basically codified that Switzerland was open to protecting the money of all the sleazebags of the world (protesting, all the while, of course, that it was providing a vital "civil liberties" service). This didn't change because the Swiss government suddenly became civilized but because the claims that they were not helping sleazebags became ever less plausible, culminating with Bradley Birkenfeld's detailed revelations in 2007. This, along with substantial pressure from the US (initially regarding drug money, then terrorist money) has the Swiss claiming they will clean up their act. But let's not get carried away. All they have done so far is claim they will do it --- things are still not especially clean. They HAVE said that they would co-operate with various governments on cases of tax evasion, but they haven't yet done what they said they will (one day, when the get around to it) to provide more transparency.
There are multiple issues here. (a) Will Switzerland co-operate with foreign governments in the event of a crime? In the past only for a limited set of crimes, since 2009 for a larger set. (b) Will Switzerland report (or some how make public) dodgy dealings and strange transactions? They say they will do something about this, but no details yet --- AND the details may well be on a per-country basis meaning (c) Will Switzerland make available to the world information about money that has been stolen "legally" (or at least carefully) from national populations, whether it's your standard African dictator, your Middle Eastern oil minister, or your Chinese billionaire, when the countries involved have NOT forced a particular agreement with Switzerland? Probably not --- they're still open for business with the Idi Amin's and Bo Xilai's of the world.
Well, not quite true. FATCA has a reporting threshold of $250k for accounts opened prior to the 1st of July 2015, so it's entirely possible to hide money offshore do long as you either "smurf" it (not really the right term for that amount of money) by having multiple accounts with different banks under the threshold. You also have to bear in mind that it only applies to passive income, not active, so investing in a trading company is a a valid way of not being reportable. In theory you could offset that legitimate trading income against property income (so long as the property assets didn't outweigh the business) and remain unreported despite FATCA.
As legislation goes, FATCA is pretty lousy. Banks want to do as little reporting as possible, so kick it up the chain to a CSP (corporate service provider) or other financial institution (FI), who in turn have the joy of trying to work out how to classify an entity and decide using advice that's about as clear as mud how to do anything.
FATCA is an incredible piece of legislation so long as you don't expect it to make any money.
I'm somewhat pleased the Isle of Man didn't come up on that list of yours. Delaware companies and high end New York property are the current hot spots for people with lots of money to launder. Why? Because US realtors don't need to comply with anti money laundering legislation and there are plenty of lawyers who assume the bank did AML checks so they're clear.
Honestly, Switzerland and the Bahamas are not the places you go if you want to hide money. Too much regulation and a lot of suspicion to shake off. You also need to be careful about jurisdiction hopping - it raises no end of red flags seeing money channeled from a Mauritius company to the BVI, the TCI, Delaware and then on to the Isle of Man to be invested in UK property. It's not always nefarious - I've seen some pretty elaborate tax advice - but it certainly raises questions.
They have a lot of money. If it were murder or rape or something, then it would be difficult. But for fraud? They can go anywhere they want and buy their way out of extradition. It's just a matter of how much. The US, Canada, Europe, will cost more than somewhere without an extradition treaty.
Extradition from the US or Canada is very difficult, no matter the circumstances or proof. It involves many political hurdles, thanks to our politicians. As for the guy with US citizenship, our President and entire executive branch will likely protect him from extradition, considering his (illegally obtained) wealth.
BTW, It wouldn't matter which party claimed by the Presidency, either would protect someone like this these days. That's why we had such widespread mortgage fraud in 2005-2008 and nobody was actually charged with any criminal wrongdoing. There was more than enough proof, and neither Michael Mukasey nor Eric Holder filed any charges against any of them.
right, I remember a case where the US refused to extradite a member of the sicilian mafia to Italy because the 41bis prison regime constitutes torture according to their judges.
Indeed, and what you're describing - systemic corruption - will eventually result in a total system crash. A system cannot stand when the incentive is to rob it blind because the consequences are either you have to pay back less than you stole with no admission of wrongdoing, thus pocketing the difference or - as in this case - you are shielded by other corrupt players in the position of power.
The entire structure of our economy is being hollowed out by those meant to safeguard it in order to enrich themselves, and the incentives are all aligned toward that goal because wrongdoing is rewarded and protected. The end result will be the structure falling to pieces like a house of cards.
We all have a front row seat to a global system crash. The sad thing is we're not merely spectators, but participants.
The big problem is that a free market would save the economy from a crash. The constant regulation is what is empowering the government corruption. Eliminate the power of the government, and the corruption goes away. Then the power of the buyers in the market makes the corruption go away in the market side. (We just have to make sure and only buy from reputable sources.)
Whatever you're smoking, i'd like some of it please.
The natural state of humanity is slavery and decay. The only thing standing in the way of that is the rule of law (regulation). Most of our time here on this planet has been spent under the rule of a feudal or slavery based economy, with only a few glimmers of equality scattered throughout history which were enabled by the rule of law.
Take that order out of the equation and everything becomes chaos. Do you really believe that the Free Market is invulnerable to corruption? That those who win in that area won't immediately consolidate their power, lower wages to nothing, and destroy their competition, thereby destroying the free market? Is the concept of the free market itself so noble that its participants magically just decide to cast off their human nature?
Your libertarianism is absurd magical thinking that completely ignores human nature. Without the rule of law - without regulation - people become animals.
Hehe precisely, some of these libertarians need to spend some time in parts of west/central Africa and the destabilized Middle East to see what life is like without a strong central government or even a military dictatorship.
Roving bands of marauders, local warchiefs, mass atrocities, and general lawlessness. Good times indeed which is amazing given we are well into the 21st century!
If the person is a US citizen you'd expect them to be protected by due process just as you'd expect yourself to be protected. Once you are extradited there's pretty much nothing that can be done if you were wrongfully accused in another country. Don't be so quick to judge the US or it's "political hurdles".
Hell, forget extradition. In the US fraud that involves mortgages is not even (apparently) a criminal offense. In general the US mostly cares buggerall about white collar fraud.
This is likely to result in a lot of products no longer being available. A Zalman search on Amazon turns up 43 pages of interesting products. An article on non-Zalman alternatives would be very welcome.
I'm not sure they've put out anything new that was worth a mention in several years. The alternatives in the high-end air cooler market are the usual names, Noctua, Thermalright, etc.
An OS-independent encrypted external drive that can present ISO files as a virtual disc, again independent of an OS. I have the (older) unencrypted model. It's pretty spiffy.
If you're in the field and don't have a burner handy (recall that ODD usage is in a decline in this age of download-on-demand digital distribution), having a portable HDD that can mimic an ODD and containing up to dozens of ISO's can be a godsend. Heck, maybe you even ran out of blank discs and your next shipment hasn't come in yet and you can't just leave to pick some up at a local store. Besides, I wouldn't want to burn a disc every time a new ISO release comes out for something. Easier to just replace the ISO on a portable HDD.
That Zalman ODD-emulating portable HDD is a godsend for field techs.
While DriveDroid is pretty neat, I can't imagine dealing with a bunch of several GB ISO images on my phone. Just the transfer times would be absurdly frustrating. It's a cool option for a few small rescue type images though.
I can see the value. Every bootable ISO you ever need on one drive, whether they are Linux or DOS or WinPE based. There are utilities to combine a bunch of bootable ISOs on a usb drive, but this could theoretically be simpler (and most of those utilities seem to be one type or another, e.g. Linux or Windows based ISOs on one drive).
Thanks for that link by the way. I hadn't seen an enclosure that did ODD emulation before. I just ordered the older model. It's cheaper there than Amazon, and there's a rebate too.
:( I love Zalman products. Granted in more recent years there are better options, albeit at higher prices. But they still offer great products at good prices.
I still fondly remember that heavy copper beast of Zalman's that I put on top of my Athlon way back in the day. I hope someone puts a few of those bad boys in a sack and goes to work on these people.
Last time I bought a Zalman product was a cpu cooler that was on deep discount. I can't think of any product they make that stands out when I look at hardware reviews when building or updating a new rig.
[...] may not receive what punishment they deserve
The notion of punishment is deeply ingrained in our culture. Punishment doesn't fix the past, it doesn't prevent the recipient from doing it again and doesn't help in rehab. Contrarily to what one might think, the idea of vengeance for harm done to oneself doesn't bring closure either.
The purpose of our justice and correctional system isn't to punish but to protect the rest of us from further harm and ideally contribute to rehabilitation.
I recommend you document yourself on the topic. In particular, Free Will's reading by Sam Harris on YouTube is excellent.
Right. So people who steal or kill or do other wrongs, we should shrug our shoulders. Contrary to what you apparently believe, "rehabilitation" is pretty much a fairy tail. People who *want* to become law-abiding citizens will, those who don't, won't. Of course there are socio-economic factors at play as well, but you can't shrug your shoulders at law-breaking because the perpetrator was poor or socially disadvantaged.
> Right. So people who steal or kill or do other wrongs, we should shrug our shoulders.
That's a straw man. xakor said
> The purpose of our justice and correctional system isn't to punish but to protect the rest of us from further harm and ideally contribute to rehabilitation.
Where in that is the claim that we should let people get away with murder? That is neither protecting the rest of us nor contributing to rehabilitation.
> Contrary to what you apparently believe, "rehabilitation" is pretty much a fairy tail.
Denying that rehabilitation works requires denying the overwhelming statistical evidence in its favour. If I were to cite any one thing, it would be this¹ because of the number of relevant citations to elsewhere and a convenient summary of their results.
Let me clarify. You very correctly said that "the purpose of our justice and correctional system isn't to punish but *to protect the rest of us from further harm* and ideally contribute to rehabilitation" - ultimately, that is all that matters.
Yes, punishment will not fix the past. Yes, it hardly helps (more likely harms) in rehab. People make mistakes and I do agree that a vengeful, strict law system is doing more harm than good. But when someone plans a fraud of this magnitude, they knew exactly what they were doing and planned it several years in advance. These people are just plain dangerous, fully aware of the consequences of their actions and the notion of "rehab" is just plain silly in such cases.
By "punishment", I do not suggest that they should be flayed alive and hanged in public, but I do believe that keeping such minds behind bars would make the world a sliiiiiiiiiiiiightly better place. I also believe that getting people like these, who damaged or even destroyed the lives of who knows how many people, in a cold damp cell somewhere, would almost certainly make a lot of people feel some satisfaction, even if only temporary. I know that at least my breakfast would taste better if I read that they are going to be spending the rest of their lives in jail. Letting them enjoy the nearly one billion dollars they stole will be a huge hit to humanity.
I like the restitution model for cases like these. Make them pay back everyone they took unjustly from, with a set percentage over for punishment. They stole 900 million dollars, they have to pay back to the people they stole from something like 1.5 billion. If they can't pay, we'll make them work it off.
Even in bankrupcy, Zalman's assets and IP can be purchassed at bargain price by a competitor and the glourious days of quality cooling solution can continue.
Even Moneual actually had some nice looking PC cases back in the day. My previous HTPC case was by them... but things seemed fishy to me (obviously not on the scale of this, just that it was an odd thing I noticed) when I couldn't find any of their drivers anywhere on their own page, and they instead only showed the robotics stuff.
this is interesting, everyone should do it. start a company, forge the books, pretend massive profits and high margin, get huge loans from banks, sell a gigantic amount of obligations and never repay them, when they investigate your company, just flee to russia or elsewhere with your new acquire billion wealth. Repeat 10 years later in another country or sell books to teach how to do it...Awesome!!!
Oh man, no! Not Zalman! A quality company like that... it's such a waste. And dat flowery heatsink... I had one for my Athlon, a decade ago. Memories...
bolting a 1.5 pounds of copper onto your CPU!... oh yeaaa! grunt,grunt... i due love those zalman coolers... expensive now, but none are prettier than zalman... sadly while i have almost all of the old HSF, the fans on them were a bit noisy. do wish they would release a 1150/1155 socket retention kit for the old "poundage heatsinks"... i have to resort to zip ties lol zip tieing 1.5 pound of copper to a heatsink (with a mod'ed noctua 25 dollar fan in the center)...
The real mastermind behind this fraud will never be extradited. The white-collar crime of this nature is rarely prosecuted to the full extent in Korea, especially when the alleged criminals have foreign citizenship and fled the country already. The prosecutors will just get on with arresting people in Korea and close the case. The extradition takes too much of their time and effort with very little results to show for at the end for this type of financial fraudulent case. I'm speaking from an experience of working with the Korea prosecutors in similar cases.
Here's hoping someone with some (real) money buys Zalman and uses their brand to build us some great coolers again. Corsair, maybe. Or NZXT. Or an up and comer like maybe even Rosewill.
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icrf - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
Ouch. Is fraud not a extradition worthy offense?r3loaded - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
The US definitely has an extradition treaty with South Korea so if they're in the US it's certainly possible. Of course, it's quite possible they've already fled and set up a new life in a country that won't extradite them while stashing their ill-gotten gains in a Swiss bank account.Murloc - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
they committed a crime, the korean prosecutors would have gotten their assets in Switzerland freezed by now if they had any.I don't understand why people think that a swiss bank account is somehow secret.
The banks know who their clients are and if the federal prosecutors receives a request they will freeze the assets during the investigation. They do this all the time during italian mafia investigations happening in Italy.
Look at delaware, the channel islands, the carribean and the pacific if you're looking for dirty money.
Also don't forget that you're talking about an US citizen.
FATCA means that there are no secrets for the US tax authorities.
It also means that swiss banks refuse to take the money of any american citizen that is not living in Switzerland (and in some cases even if he does) because of the bureaucratic obstacles and legal insecurity.
beginner99 - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
Thank you. This stupid Swiss banks bashing is ridiculously. Delaware has much worse laws meaning you would be better of going there to do illegal stuff than Swiss Banks. So yeah stop annoying other countries and fucking first clean up your own mess at home!name99 - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
The Swiss bashing may not be justified TODAY, but if you act as a parasite on world society, don't be surprised if your parasitic reputation persists for many years.The Swiss government passed the law of 1934 which basically codified that Switzerland was open to protecting the money of all the sleazebags of the world (protesting, all the while, of course, that it was providing a vital "civil liberties" service).
This didn't change because the Swiss government suddenly became civilized but because the claims that they were not helping sleazebags became ever less plausible, culminating with Bradley Birkenfeld's detailed revelations in 2007. This, along with substantial pressure from the US (initially regarding drug money, then terrorist money) has the Swiss claiming they will clean up their act.
But let's not get carried away. All they have done so far is claim they will do it --- things are still not especially clean. They HAVE said that they would co-operate with various governments on cases of tax evasion, but they haven't yet done what they said they will (one day, when the get around to it) to provide more transparency.
There are multiple issues here.
(a) Will Switzerland co-operate with foreign governments in the event of a crime? In the past only for a limited set of crimes, since 2009 for a larger set.
(b) Will Switzerland report (or some how make public) dodgy dealings and strange transactions? They say they will do something about this, but no details yet --- AND the details may well be on a per-country basis meaning
(c) Will Switzerland make available to the world information about money that has been stolen "legally" (or at least carefully) from national populations, whether it's your standard African dictator, your Middle Eastern oil minister, or your Chinese billionaire, when the countries involved have NOT forced a particular agreement with Switzerland?
Probably not --- they're still open for business with the Idi Amin's and Bo Xilai's of the world.
santiagodraco - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link
Right after you clean up your spelling and grammar.Primum - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
Well, not quite true. FATCA has a reporting threshold of $250k for accounts opened prior to the 1st of July 2015, so it's entirely possible to hide money offshore do long as you either "smurf" it (not really the right term for that amount of money) by having multiple accounts with different banks under the threshold. You also have to bear in mind that it only applies to passive income, not active, so investing in a trading company is a a valid way of not being reportable. In theory you could offset that legitimate trading income against property income (so long as the property assets didn't outweigh the business) and remain unreported despite FATCA.As legislation goes, FATCA is pretty lousy. Banks want to do as little reporting as possible, so kick it up the chain to a CSP (corporate service provider) or other financial institution (FI), who in turn have the joy of trying to work out how to classify an entity and decide using advice that's about as clear as mud how to do anything.
FATCA is an incredible piece of legislation so long as you don't expect it to make any money.
I'm somewhat pleased the Isle of Man didn't come up on that list of yours. Delaware companies and high end New York property are the current hot spots for people with lots of money to launder. Why? Because US realtors don't need to comply with anti money laundering legislation and there are plenty of lawyers who assume the bank did AML checks so they're clear.
Honestly, Switzerland and the Bahamas are not the places you go if you want to hide money. Too much regulation and a lot of suspicion to shake off. You also need to be careful about jurisdiction hopping - it raises no end of red flags seeing money channeled from a Mauritius company to the BVI, the TCI, Delaware and then on to the Isle of Man to be invested in UK property. It's not always nefarious - I've seen some pretty elaborate tax advice - but it certainly raises questions.
Yeah, you probably don't care. :P
Primum - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
*2014, not 2015Jaybus - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
They have a lot of money. If it were murder or rape or something, then it would be difficult. But for fraud? They can go anywhere they want and buy their way out of extradition. It's just a matter of how much. The US, Canada, Europe, will cost more than somewhere without an extradition treaty.willis936 - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
A billion dollars missing is enough to ruin more lives than a single murder.dgingeri - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
Extradition from the US or Canada is very difficult, no matter the circumstances or proof. It involves many political hurdles, thanks to our politicians. As for the guy with US citizenship, our President and entire executive branch will likely protect him from extradition, considering his (illegally obtained) wealth.BTW, It wouldn't matter which party claimed by the Presidency, either would protect someone like this these days. That's why we had such widespread mortgage fraud in 2005-2008 and nobody was actually charged with any criminal wrongdoing. There was more than enough proof, and neither Michael Mukasey nor Eric Holder filed any charges against any of them.
Murloc - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
right, I remember a case where the US refused to extradite a member of the sicilian mafia to Italy because the 41bis prison regime constitutes torture according to their judges.alacard - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
Indeed, and what you're describing - systemic corruption - will eventually result in a total system crash. A system cannot stand when the incentive is to rob it blind because the consequences are either you have to pay back less than you stole with no admission of wrongdoing, thus pocketing the difference or - as in this case - you are shielded by other corrupt players in the position of power.The entire structure of our economy is being hollowed out by those meant to safeguard it in order to enrich themselves, and the incentives are all aligned toward that goal because wrongdoing is rewarded and protected. The end result will be the structure falling to pieces like a house of cards.
We all have a front row seat to a global system crash. The sad thing is we're not merely spectators, but participants.
dgingeri - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
The big problem is that a free market would save the economy from a crash. The constant regulation is what is empowering the government corruption. Eliminate the power of the government, and the corruption goes away. Then the power of the buyers in the market makes the corruption go away in the market side. (We just have to make sure and only buy from reputable sources.)alacard - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
"and the corruption goes away"Whatever you're smoking, i'd like some of it please.
The natural state of humanity is slavery and decay. The only thing standing in the way of that is the rule of law (regulation). Most of our time here on this planet has been spent under the rule of a feudal or slavery based economy, with only a few glimmers of equality scattered throughout history which were enabled by the rule of law.
Take that order out of the equation and everything becomes chaos. Do you really believe that the Free Market is invulnerable to corruption? That those who win in that area won't immediately consolidate their power, lower wages to nothing, and destroy their competition, thereby destroying the free market? Is the concept of the free market itself so noble that its participants magically just decide to cast off their human nature?
Your libertarianism is absurd magical thinking that completely ignores human nature. Without the rule of law - without regulation - people become animals.
chizow - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
Hehe precisely, some of these libertarians need to spend some time in parts of west/central Africa and the destabilized Middle East to see what life is like without a strong central government or even a military dictatorship.Roving bands of marauders, local warchiefs, mass atrocities, and general lawlessness. Good times indeed which is amazing given we are well into the 21st century!
santiagodraco - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link
If the person is a US citizen you'd expect them to be protected by due process just as you'd expect yourself to be protected. Once you are extradited there's pretty much nothing that can be done if you were wrongfully accused in another country. Don't be so quick to judge the US or it's "political hurdles".name99 - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
Hell, forget extradition. In the US fraud that involves mortgages is not even (apparently) a criminal offense. In general the US mostly cares buggerall about white collar fraud.piiman - Saturday, November 8, 2014 - link
Yes but since we don't like to prosecute Corporate CEO's for Corporate fraud we'll probably not honor the extradition request.rhx123 - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
How sad.JeffFlanagan - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
This is likely to result in a lot of products no longer being available. A Zalman search on Amazon turns up 43 pages of interesting products. An article on non-Zalman alternatives would be very welcome.A5 - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
I'm not sure they've put out anything new that was worth a mention in several years. The alternatives in the high-end air cooler market are the usual names, Noctua, Thermalright, etc.Minion4Hire - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
http://www.zalman.com/global/product/Product_Read....An OS-independent encrypted external drive that can present ISO files as a virtual disc, again independent of an OS. I have the (older) unencrypted model. It's pretty spiffy.
BedfordTim - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
We have several of them and they are a godsend. 50+ CDs in your will fit in your pocket, and access times are better as well.Murloc - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
useful how?It must be extremely niche because most people manage just fine with daemon tools o burning the ISO on a CD.
Might be a cool concept but that's it.
Stahn Aileron - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
If you're in the field and don't have a burner handy (recall that ODD usage is in a decline in this age of download-on-demand digital distribution), having a portable HDD that can mimic an ODD and containing up to dozens of ISO's can be a godsend. Heck, maybe you even ran out of blank discs and your next shipment hasn't come in yet and you can't just leave to pick some up at a local store. Besides, I wouldn't want to burn a disc every time a new ISO release comes out for something. Easier to just replace the ISO on a portable HDD.That Zalman ODD-emulating portable HDD is a godsend for field techs.
HillBeast - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
I'm sure there's an app for Android for rooted devices that does this.Bob Todd - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
While DriveDroid is pretty neat, I can't imagine dealing with a bunch of several GB ISO images on my phone. Just the transfer times would be absurdly frustrating. It's a cool option for a few small rescue type images though.Bob Todd - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
Also, most kernels don't support presenting the ISO as an ODD (without kernel patches), which makes it less useful.Bob Todd - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
I can see the value. Every bootable ISO you ever need on one drive, whether they are Linux or DOS or WinPE based. There are utilities to combine a bunch of bootable ISOs on a usb drive, but this could theoretically be simpler (and most of those utilities seem to be one type or another, e.g. Linux or Windows based ISOs on one drive).Bob Todd - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
Thanks for that link by the way. I hadn't seen an enclosure that did ODD emulation before. I just ordered the older model. It's cheaper there than Amazon, and there's a rebate too.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
FITCamaro - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
:( I love Zalman products. Granted in more recent years there are better options, albeit at higher prices. But they still offer great products at good prices.Sttm - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
I still fondly remember that heavy copper beast of Zalman's that I put on top of my Athlon way back in the day. I hope someone puts a few of those bad boys in a sack and goes to work on these people.zlandar - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
Last time I bought a Zalman product was a cpu cooler that was on deep discount. I can't think of any product they make that stands out when I look at hardware reviews when building or updating a new rig.julianbautista87 - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
hmmm, how sad. Coincidentally my zalman lga 775 cooler died last week (damaged fan).xakor - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
[...] may not receive what punishment they deserveThe notion of punishment is deeply ingrained in our culture. Punishment doesn't fix the past, it doesn't prevent the recipient from doing it again and doesn't help in rehab. Contrarily to what one might think, the idea of vengeance for harm done to oneself doesn't bring closure either.
The purpose of our justice and correctional system isn't to punish but to protect the rest of us from further harm and ideally contribute to rehabilitation.
I recommend you document yourself on the topic. In particular, Free Will's reading by Sam Harris on YouTube is excellent.
kyuu - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
Right. So people who steal or kill or do other wrongs, we should shrug our shoulders. Contrary to what you apparently believe, "rehabilitation" is pretty much a fairy tail. People who *want* to become law-abiding citizens will, those who don't, won't. Of course there are socio-economic factors at play as well, but you can't shrug your shoulders at law-breaking because the perpetrator was poor or socially disadvantaged.kyuu - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
Damnit Anandtech, this is a tech site. Why the heck can't you get a comment system in place that allows edits?!fairy tale*
Veedrac - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
> Right. So people who steal or kill or do other wrongs, we should shrug our shoulders.That's a straw man. xakor said
> The purpose of our justice and correctional system isn't to punish but to protect the rest of us from further harm and ideally contribute to rehabilitation.
Where in that is the claim that we should let people get away with murder? That is neither protecting the rest of us nor contributing to rehabilitation.
> Contrary to what you apparently believe, "rehabilitation" is pretty much a fairy tail.
Denying that rehabilitation works requires denying the overwhelming statistical evidence in its favour. If I were to cite any one thing, it would be this¹ because of the number of relevant citations to elsewhere and a convenient summary of their results.
¹ http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0741882...
E.Fyll - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
Let me clarify. You very correctly said that "the purpose of our justice and correctional system isn't to punish but *to protect the rest of us from further harm* and ideally contribute to rehabilitation" - ultimately, that is all that matters.Yes, punishment will not fix the past. Yes, it hardly helps (more likely harms) in rehab. People make mistakes and I do agree that a vengeful, strict law system is doing more harm than good. But when someone plans a fraud of this magnitude, they knew exactly what they were doing and planned it several years in advance. These people are just plain dangerous, fully aware of the consequences of their actions and the notion of "rehab" is just plain silly in such cases.
By "punishment", I do not suggest that they should be flayed alive and hanged in public, but I do believe that keeping such minds behind bars would make the world a sliiiiiiiiiiiiightly better place. I also believe that getting people like these, who damaged or even destroyed the lives of who knows how many people, in a cold damp cell somewhere, would almost certainly make a lot of people feel some satisfaction, even if only temporary. I know that at least my breakfast would taste better if I read that they are going to be spending the rest of their lives in jail. Letting them enjoy the nearly one billion dollars they stole will be a huge hit to humanity.
jardows2 - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
I like the restitution model for cases like these. Make them pay back everyone they took unjustly from, with a set percentage over for punishment. They stole 900 million dollars, they have to pay back to the people they stole from something like 1.5 billion. If they can't pay, we'll make them work it off.Flunk - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
I hope they get bought out by Corsair or one of the other more-reputable PC cooling companies.Da W - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
Even in bankrupcy, Zalman's assets and IP can be purchassed at bargain price by a competitor and the glourious days of quality cooling solution can continue.jhoff80 - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
Even Moneual actually had some nice looking PC cases back in the day. My previous HTPC case was by them... but things seemed fishy to me (obviously not on the scale of this, just that it was an odd thing I noticed) when I couldn't find any of their drivers anywhere on their own page, and they instead only showed the robotics stuff.gammaray - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
this is interesting, everyone should do it. start a company, forge the books, pretend massive profits and high margin, get huge loans from banks, sell a gigantic amount of obligations and never repay them, when they investigate your company, just flee to russia or elsewhere with your new acquire billion wealth. Repeat 10 years later in another country or sell books to teach how to do it...Awesome!!!Samus - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
:( very sad.Keisari - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
Oh man, no! Not Zalman!A quality company like that... it's such a waste.
And dat flowery heatsink... I had one for my Athlon, a decade ago. Memories...
surfnaround - Monday, November 10, 2014 - link
bolting a 1.5 pounds of copper onto your CPU!... oh yeaaa! grunt,grunt...i due love those zalman coolers... expensive now, but none are prettier than zalman... sadly while i have almost all of the old HSF, the fans on them were a bit noisy. do wish they would release a 1150/1155 socket retention kit for the old "poundage heatsinks"... i have to resort to zip ties lol zip tieing 1.5 pound of copper to a heatsink (with a mod'ed noctua 25 dollar fan in the center)...
GenSozo - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
AMD should dig through their couch for the funds and buy Zalman out. Then they might ship good CPU coolers with their processors at last. :)Doh! - Sunday, November 9, 2014 - link
The real mastermind behind this fraud will never be extradited. The white-collar crime of this nature is rarely prosecuted to the full extent in Korea, especially when the alleged criminals have foreign citizenship and fled the country already. The prosecutors will just get on with arresting people in Korea and close the case. The extradition takes too much of their time and effort with very little results to show for at the end for this type of financial fraudulent case. I'm speaking from an experience of working with the Korea prosecutors in similar cases.HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Here's hoping someone with some (real) money buys Zalman and uses their brand to build us some great coolers again. Corsair, maybe. Or NZXT. Or an up and comer like maybe even Rosewill.