The Case of the Casbah and the Offensive American Dancer

A group in Morocco is suing American dancer Jennifer Lopez for "tarnishing women's honor and respect" with her racy performance in country. I have little doubt that the charges are fully justified by the local community standards, but the group is probably out of luck. Morocco has no extradition treaty with the United States, so the potential jail time will certainly never be served.

Last week I related The Tale of Scott Rothstein and His Golden Toilets, and mentioned among other things that Rothstein had "fled to Morocco" along with 16 million of his closest friends when it looked like the proverbial jig was up for him and his Ponzi scheme....

Not coincidentally, Morocco is one of the countries that has no extradition treaty with the United States, something that Rothstein knew because -- and this is possibly my favorite detail of the whole story, short of the golden toilets -- he made somebody in his firm research that issue for him. The project was supposedly on behalf of a "client," but he was in fact having someone research the question of where he should flee to avoid prosecution.

I was sort of hoping he called in an associate and just made that person do it, but it turns out he sent an email, apparently to everyone in the firm, saying he had a rush project for an important client. "We have a client that was a United States citizen until about 6 months ago," Rothstein wrote in the email, probably able to resist making air quotes around "client" only because he was busy typing the word. "He became a citizen of Israel and renounced his United States citizenship. He is likely to be charged with a multitude of crimes in the United States including fraud, money laundering and embezzlement." (I'm trying to imagine what people at the firm were thinking upon reading this.) Rothstein wanted them to research whether the client could be extradited from Israel, or could be prosecuted for the crimes in Israel. "This client is related to a very powerful client of ours," Rothstein continued, "and so time is of the essence. Lets [sic] rock and roll....there is a very large fee attached to this case. Thanks Love ya Scott," he concluded.

That works both ways. They get our Ponzi scheme artists, but they don't get our... er, "artists."