The reliance on e-mails as definitive, incriminating evidence of chicanery was once a given, but that didn't last long. Social media have now damaged the credibility of such e-mails, as the monumental Bear Stearns fraud verdict shows.

E-mails shooting back and forth during 2007 between Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin looked like bullets that hit the target, damning the two hedge-fund goniffs on charges of securities fraud. (See my previous item for details from the indictment.)

Such careless and stupid e-mails revealing crooked behavior doomed previous goniffs, like Jack Abramoff and his henchmen in the infamous Wampumgate corruption scandal of the Bush era. (The unmasking of that scandal was one of John McCain's finest moments, if you recall.) The e-mails wove a fascinating web of corruption extended to the religious right, several congressmen, and Karl Rove. And the e-mails not only brought Abramoff and crew to justice, but they forced congressmen out of their jobs.

But this is a new time, and texting and twittering have now convinced many people that e-mails are also thoughts on the fly that aren't necessarily proof or even strong evidence. That's obviously because we all now rue some of the thoughts on the fly that we text and twitter. And texting and twittering are even more careless and less thought-out than e-mails.

So cases built on e-mails no longer have the cred they once had.

But the problem is this: Those thoughts on the fly are often really good evidence of malicious or illegal intent. Twittering and texting have merely inured the common folk, blinding them to that fact. Just because someone twitters, texts, or e-mails incriminating statements doesn't make those statements not incriminating.

In any case, John Hueston, who prosecuted Enron's top crooks, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, says it best in this morning's New York Times:

The verdict in the Bear Stearns fraud case has far-reaching implications for Wall Street execs, and it's all good — for them.

Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin were found not guilty in Brooklyn federal court of fraud and other charges related to their blatant lying about their hedge funds, which were built on the subprime-mortgage house of cards.

In the only federal prosecution so far of any of the goniffs who helped cause last year's Wall Street meltdown, they got away with murder (of their investors' money), if you read the last year's indictment. Even their participation in the homicide of Bear Stearns (their funds lost almost $2 billion) was blessed by the jury, which said the prosecutors didn't give them enough evidence.

According to the indictment, back on March 2, 2007, Cioffi and Tannin were freaked out by their funds' extremely shaky — even doomed — liquidity because the subprime mortgages underlying the CDOs they were peddling were collapsing. They drank "a vodka toast" privately just for surviving the previous month without having to fold their huge hedge funds, and they kept their worries to themselves, not even telling their bosses, apparently. To investors, however, they lied, saying everything was hunky-dory (lie) and that they were putting their own money into their funds (lie).

The next day, March 3, according to the indictment, Cioffi told Tannin that things could be worse: "[W]e have our health and families ... [w]e are not a 19-year-old Marine in Iraq. ..."

Barack Obama's administration has so far been witless for the prosecution of the goniff investment bankers who crashed Wall Street and has shown no signs of clawing back the wealth that dramatically shifted from households to private equity, hedge funds, foreign bank accounts, and the bailed-out banks themselves.

Read about Obama's clawless — not clueless but inherently clawless — crew in James Lieber's "We've Bailed out the Banks. When Do We Go After the Crooks Behind our Financial Collapse?," the Voice's cover story this week. Long piece, but a quick read.

You might remember Lieber's "What Cooked the World's Economy?" from earlier this year, in which he laid out a groundbreaking, readable analysis of the devilish details.

Obama hasn't exactly surrounded himself with regulators, as Lieber points out.

An argument could be made that the Bush administration's prosecutors were more aggressive against the Wall Street goniffs last year than the current crew. No shit.

A brilliant piece of reporting and writing by the guys at The Smoking Gun outed notorious Pranknet, whose fools have destroyed businesses and people's appetites all over North America.

Why the mainstream press hasn't really picked up on the TSG scoop is beyond me.

Read the TSG expose of the cheesy prankster crew (one of them a convicted child molester) — "Outing An Online Outlaw: A TSG investigation unmasks the leader of Pranknet and the miscreants behind a year-long wave of phone call criminality" — and the followup story (revealing yet another child molester in the crew) here.

Great piece in this morning's WSJ, "Insider Affair: An SEC Trial of the Heart," on how an Ernst & Young partner, James Gansman, wound up convicted of securities fraud in an insider-trading case.

All Gansman was looking for was a little illicit sex. He got much, much more. The WSJ's Dennis Berman read the transcripts of Gansman's little-publicized trial this past spring. The result is a must-read tale of hubris.

Nevada Senator John Ensign, a prime GOP critic of Barack Obama's economic-stimulus plan, says he won't resign, despite the furor over his having regularly fucked one of his staffers.

The L.A. Times notes that the "silver-haired, telegenic conservative," who has been "a rising star in the Republican Party," was "grim-faced" as he apologized.

Ensign didn't identify the staffer, but she (or he) must be feeling pretty miffed that Ensign described their affair as "absolutely the worst thing I have ever done in my life."

True to form, Ensign noted that he and wife Darlene went into counseling and that their marriage is "stronger than ever."

Maybe eventually, no one will care whom he or other politicians fuck, as long as they do it on their own time and their own dime and aren't hypocritical about it.

Of course, popular butch broadcaster Rachel Maddow accurately points out that very hypocrisy: that before Ensign admitted cheating on his wife he had affirmed that he was an ardent believer in the "institution of marriage" and an adamant foe of gay marriages. Not to mention that he didn't carry on his affair on his own time: He was not only fucking one of his campaign staffers but she was married to one of his other staffers — a cuckold in his Senate office.

Anyway, Americans aren't as evolved as Europeans (who generally don't care who their politicans fuck), so this tiff over Ensign is is good news for Obama. The president's going to have a tough enough time getting his vaunted "overhaul" of the financial system through Congress. Now, a key foe of his stimulus plan has confessed to being overstimulated and has suffered a public embarrassment. Ensign is chair of the Republican Policy Committee and has been a frequent talking-head critic of Obama's economic package. He might have a tougher time getting people to take him seriously when he criticizes the other guy's package.

The senator says he won't resign, but he is thought to have quit his job as the latest driver of the GOP Pussy Wagon.

Some Nevada observers say the fuss won't hurt him locally because "he's the leading voice in Nevada and in the country for fiscal restraint." Physical restraint, however, is something else, at least when it comes to Ensign's keeping his dick in his pants.

During a time when bonuses, pensions, and sweet deals for big shots are all the enrage, the southern Texas judge is getting off light, except in the pockets. From Jurist:

Kent, who was found to have lied to a panel of judges investigating the sex charges, faced 20 years in prison but was sentenced to 33 months. And during the next year, he will continue to collect his full $174,000 salary and full health benefits. House Judiciary members vowed to continue pressing for impeachment of Kent. If that happens, at least the judge will have enough cash flow for the next year to pay his lawyers.

Leveraged-buyout goniff loses leverage over New Yorkers' public money, sells out to prosecutors in Hevesi probe

Your pension — making the unlikely assumption that you even have one — has taken a beating in the market, but at least someone made off like a bandit with retirement loot.

Until that someone, a character named Barrett Wissman, got caught.

This scumbag has now pled guilty and is cooperating with authorities, so count on more of the scandal surrounding Alan Hevesi's misadministration as New York's state comptroller coming to light.

Hevesi himself hasn't been charged, but here's some advice: Don't send the veteran Democratic pol any campaign contributions.

Keep track of the Hevesi scandal by reading Tom Robbins's skillful thrusts into the pension-fund murk.

While Robbins continues to unearth nuggets about the goniffs who gobbled up hapless New Yorkers' retirement money, I'll try to pound this into your heads:

Even in the best of times, and even when crooks aren't looting pension funds, those funds are being used in legal but vile ways by the schnooks of private equity. (Also see "'Just a reminder: Private equity, stock market Ponzi-like.'")

Let's put it this way: "Private equity" is just a nice-sounding way of saying "leveraged buyouts," and "private-equity managers" used to be called "raiders." Like pirates. Only they dress better.