Embezzle (pronounced em-bez-uhl)
In law, fraudulently to appropriate or convert (money or
property entrusted to one's care) for one's own use (applied especially to
fraud committed by an employee).
1375–1425: From the late Middle English embesilen, from the fourteenth century Anglo-French embesiler, embesillier & embeseillier (to destroy, make away with; to steal, cause to disappear), the construct being em- + beseiller, from the Old French beseiller (to torment, destroy, gouge) of uncertain origin. The sense of “dispose of fraudulently to one's own use” dates from the 1580s. The earliest known use of the noun embezzler (one who embezzles) was in the 1660s but it may pre-date that because the noun embezzlement was known in the 1540s while the noun embezzling dates from the early fifteenth century. The em- prefix (used before certain consonants, most often the labials b and p) was a variant of the Middle English en-. It was originally from the Old French en- (and an-), from the Latin in- (in, into) but was also from an alteration of in-, from the Middle English in-, from the Old English in- (in, into), from the Proto-Germanic in (in). Both the Latin and Germanic forms were from the primitive Indo-European en (in, into). The intensive use of the Old French en- & an- is due to confluence with the Frankish an- (the intensive prefix), related to Old English intensive prefix on-. It was used to impart the sense of (1) in, into, (2) on, onto, (3) covered, (4) caused or (5) as an intensifier. Embezzle, embezzles, embezzled & embezzling are verbs and embezzlement & embezzler are nouns; the most common noun plural is embezzler.
In English law, embezzle was a special class of theft or fraud which was distinguished by two characteristics: (1) the act was committed by a person employed by the owner of the misappropriated property and (2) the property misappropriated was in the (legal) possession of the employee. The fine distinctions arose early in the development of common law because of the practical difficulties caused by the long-established legal doctrine that to constitute a larceny, the property must be removed from the possession of the owner. Servants and others were thus able to steal with impunity goods entrusted to them by their masters and a stature of 1529 was enacted, providing that it would be a felony were employees to convert to their own use jewels, money, goods or chattels delivered to them by their employers (masters in the terminology of the time). It's an illustration of the difference between "in legal possession of" and "lawfully possessing".
Confessed embezzler Bernie Madoff (1938-2021) embezzled almost US$20 billion using as a platform history's largest (known) Ponzi scheme. After being arrested, the DoJ (Department of Justice) and the SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission) stated referring to him as “Bernard Madoff”, the media and most politicians following their lead; it was felt an affectionate diminutive like “Bernie” was no longer appropriate. Between 1990-1993, during his respectable period, Mr Madoff served three one-year terms as chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (the Nasdaq (one of those initialisms which became an acronym)); the New York-based stock exchange described usually as "tech heavy"). Even today, Mr Madoff's scheme is sometimes described as "a US65 billion scam" but the actual embezzlement was around US$20 billion, the additional funds all in his imagination. Predictably, those who did best were the lawyers involved in the case who charged a reputed US$800 million.
The idea that “theft as a servant” was an offense which
deserved a greater punishment that theft by a stranger remains a doctrine in
common law jurisdictions, the rationale being that such crime is also a
violation of trust. In Australia, the
concept has attracted interest of late because of the increasing frequency of “wage-theft”
cases in which employers have been found to have been engaged in deliberately
under-paying their staff, sometimes in a manner which is so carefully
constructed as to have been held to have been systemic. In most jurisdictions, the penalties available
remain civil but two states have recently passed laws permitting criminal prosecutions
of both corporations and individuals. Legal
commentators have generally welcomed the development, noting the frequently
cited defense that organizations lacked the resources to deal with the
complexity of the award wage system didn’t appear to constrain them when
engaging in the tax minimization exercises made possible by the intricacies of
tax law. The law reform does nothing to
alter the notion of “theft as a servant” being higher order of offending that
done by a stranger but it does slightly redress the injustice of embezzlement
by employees being by definition a criminal act yet embezzlement by employers
was only ever a matter redressed by civil action and, in a practical sense, usually
claimed to be “an error” rather than a “deliberate act”, a defense rarely
tolerated if raised by an employee (an in this judges were doubtlessly usually
correct). The first case under a
criminal code is now before the Victorian courts.
In idiomatic use, someone with their “fingers in the till”
is committing embezzlement. Synonyms exist
but because of precise definitions in law, not all are interchangeable in a
legal context. In general use they
include filch, loot, misappropriate, misuse, pilfer, purloin, skim, abstract,
defalcate, forge, misapply, peculate, thieve, defalcate, flog, pinch and peculate. Most tempting because of the rarity is probably
the verb peculate (embezzle, pilfer, appropriate to one's own use public money
or goods entrusted to one's care) from 1749, from the Latin peculatus, past participle of peculari (to embezzle), from peculum (private property (and originally
"cattle"), the related forms being peculated, peculating & peculator.
The Great Crash 1929
The conditions which exist at certain times Galbraith observed,
are especially conducive to the creation of bezzle, and “…at particular times
this inflated sense of value is more likely to be unleashed, giving it a
systematic quality”. Those times tend to
be defined by the business cycle in that “…in good times, people are relaxed,
trusting, and money is plentiful. But
even though money is plentiful, there are always many people who need more. Under these circumstances, the rate of
embezzlement grows, the rate of discovery falls off, and the bezzle increases
rapidly. In depression, all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious
eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself
otherwise. Audits are penetrating and meticulous. Commercial morality is enormously improved and
the bezzle shrinks."
The Great Crash 2005
Crashed and towed, Los Angeles, 2005.
In 2005, Lindsay Lohan went for a drive in her Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG roadster. It didn’t end well. Based on the R230 (2001-2011) platform, the SL 65 AMG was produced between 2004-2012, all versions rated in excess of 600 horsepower, something perhaps not a wise choice for someone with no background handling such machinery though it could have been worse, the factory building 350 of the even more powerful SL 65 Black Series, the third occasion an SL was offered without a soft-top and the second time one had been configured with a fixed-roof.
Fixed and simonized, Texas, 2007.
By 2007, the car (still with California registration plates (5LZF057) attached) had been repaired, detailed & simonized and was being offered for sale in Texas, the odometer said to read 6207 miles (9989 km). Bidding was said to be “healthy” so it was thought all's well that ends well but once the vehicle's provenance was brought to the attention of the repair shop, it was realized the celebrity connection might increase its value so it was advertised on eBay with more detail, including the inevitable click-bait of LiLo photographs. However, either eBay doesn't approve of commerce profiting from the vicissitudes suffered by Hollywood starlets or they'd received a C&D (cease & desist) letter from someone's lawyers and the auction ended prematurely. It proved a brief respite, the SL 65 soon back on eBay Motors but with the offending part of the blurb limited to "previously owned by high profile celebrity", leaving it to prospective buyers to join the dots.
In other words, there can
exist a temporary (and not necessarily short) difference between the actual
economic value of a portfolio of assets and its reported market value,
especially during periods of irrational exuberance. At these times, there is “…a net increase in
psychic wealth” because (1) the embezzler both feels and is richer while the original
owners of the portfolio do not realize that they are poorer. The classic case studies of the phenomenon
are those duped in Ponzi schemes, a mechanism of deception in that two people simultaneously
can enjoy the same wealth but the effect is similar when accounting fraud is involved,
companies like Enron and WorldCom booking overvalued assets and excessively
high stock valuations. Until accounting
frauds are uncovered, there is a collective increase in psychic wealth as the
value of the bezzle rises. Bezzle is of
course temporary and when the truth emerges perceived wealth decreases until it
once again approximates real wealth but this is not an abstract measure of
value, the perceptions greatly influencing patterns of consumption with obvious
effects upon the real economy. Many recessions
have followed the unwinding of a bezzle and of course, Galbraith’s 1955 book
was about the worst of them, the Great Depression of 1929.
Others have since refined the idea of bezzle, noted investor
Charles Munger (b 1924) explaining the net effect of a bezzle doesn’t
actually demand that there be some form of constructive embezzlement as
described by Galbraith. It needs only
that when the reported market value of an asset or portfolio temporarily
exceeds its real economic value (which he defined as the value of future
returns on that asset), the economy goes through the same cycle of increase and
decrease in psychic wealth. Munger
tracked the way rising asset prices, disconnected from their underlying
long-term economic value, can contribute to what he called the febezzle. The word didn’t linger in the language as
bezzle has but his insight certainly has, his point being that rising stock or
real estate prices can generate income and wealth effects whether or not these
rising prices reflect real increases in the earning capacity of these assets. When asset prices rise for reasons other an increases
in actual productive capacity, the overall economy doesn’t benefit because
there will be no corresponding increase in the productive capacity of that
economy. The owners of the over-valued
assets so of course feel richer but only temporarily because prices eventually
converge to a value that represents their real contribution to the production
of goods and services, thus the concern some express during periods of irrational exuberance in markets such as fashionable equities, real estate,
cryptocurrencies or tulip bulbs.
Interestingly, Munger was discussing things in the
distant world of the 1990s when commentators were expressing concern about the economic
pattern in Western economies simultaneously to drive up asset prices while
restricting the money supply. Some of
the range of possible consequences of that had unfolded since the early 1980s
but those events provided little guidance to what might happen were the same
forces to be unleashed when the money supply was allowed rapidly to expand and
sold at marginal cost. In the
twenty-first century, the successive reactions of central banks to (1) the “tech
wreck” of 2000-2001, (2) the global financial crisis (2008-2011) and (3) the
COVID-19 pandemic mean the implications can be explored.
The photograph used on the cover of some editions of Galbraith's book was staged. It was taken on 30 October 1929, shortly after the Wall Street crash and purported to show investor Walter Clarence Thornton (1903–1990) offering his 1928 Chrysler Imperial 75 Roadster for US$100, the car at the time typically costing between US$1550-2000 depending on options. The Imperial name was used by Chrysler for its upper range models between 1926-1954 after which it was the corporation's stand-alone marque designed to compete with Cadillac, Lincoln and Packard, an approach abandoned in 1975 and few care to recall the abortive revival of 1990-1993. At this time, Mr Thornton was working as a model and the "lost all on the stock market shoot" was just another gig. He's remembered also for founding the Walter Thornton Modeling Agency which would be one of the most successful in the industry until the mid-1950s when he was the victim of a malicious prosecution. All charges were dismissed before going to court but the trial-by-tabloid had so damaged his reputation he retired to Mexico.
