American white-collar criminals

Michael Robert Milken (born July 4, 1946) is an American financier. He is known for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds ("junk bonds"), and his conviction and sentence following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. securities laws. Milken's compensation while head of the high-yield bond department at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s exceeded $1 billion over a four-year period, a record for U.S. income at that time. With a net worth of US$6 billion as of 2022, he is among the richest people in the world.Milken was indicted for racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 in an insider trading investigation. In a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to securities and reporting violations but not to racketeering or insider trading. Milken was sentenced to ten years in prison, fined $600 million (although his personal website claims $200 million) and permanently barred from the securities industry by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. His sentence was later reduced to two years for cooperating with testimony against his former colleagues and for good behavior. Milken was pardoned by President Donald Trump on February 18, 2020.
Since his release from prison, he has become known for his charitable donations. He is co-founder of the Milken Family Foundation, chairman of the Milken Institute, and founder of medical philanthropies funding research into melanoma, cancer, and other life-threatening diseases. A prostate cancer survivor, Milken has devoted significant resources to research on the disease.

Robert Lafee Citron (April 14, 1925 – January 16, 2013) was the longtime Treasurer-Tax Collector of Orange County, California, when it declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy on December 6, 1994. The bankruptcy was brought on by Citron's investment strategies, which seemed to be an effort to earn high incomes for the county, without raising taxes, through risky, leveraged positions in bonds. The strategy paid out at first. In 1994, a cash crunch occurred when interest rates increased and financiers for the county required increased collateral from the county. It was later revealed that Citron relied upon a mail-order astrologer and a psychic for interest rate predictions as the county's finances began to falter.

Martin R. "Marty" Frankel (born 1954) is an American financial criminal who conducted a series of investment frauds in the late 20th century, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. He was caught in 1999, and in 2004 was sentenced to 200 months in prison based on over $200 million in proven losses to insurance companies he bought then looted their actuarial reserves; the sentence was reaffirmed in 2006.