The weekly recycle episode of The Verdict had nothing on the Conrad Black trial for tonight's. There also won't be a new episode until Tuesday, because of the Easter holiday in Canada.
So, instead of a write-up, I'd like to mention a general omission in media coverage of the trial that I've recently thought of, thanks to re-watching the CTV docudrama Shades of Black (mentioned here) and remembering the sources behind the post that's three below this one.
Those sources were two books I had read more than a decade ago: Fleecing The Lamb by David Cruise and Rampaging Bulls by Alexander Tadich. Both of them stress that the typical behavior pattern of a stock-market con artist is to inflate the value of earnings (and sometimes assets) of an "exciting" company, up to the point of fixing the books to make such inflation seem genuine, at which point they either off-load or gouge. I noted in the post, which I linked to at the end of the above paragraph, that the behavior of Black, et. al. was closer to the opposite of that pattern.
I don't know if either of the two authors of the books mentioned above had interviewed an experienced police officer, one who has specialized in white-collar, public-company commercial crime. I do know, however, that there has yet to be an interview or article that I've come across that did talk to that kind of (perhaps retired) police officer about the Conrad Black trial. The RCMP may be of help in this regard, as they've been involved in going after stock-market crooks for decades, and are probably familiar with the proper American law-enforcement counterpart(s) to talk to.
It was actually the CTV docudrama the proved to be the tipping point. It includes (forgive the spoiler) a fictional character that's an FBI officer.
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