Andy Borowitz - Who Moved My Soap?: The CEOs Guide to Surviving Prison: The Bernie Madoff Edition

Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020
2003 Andy Borowitz
Michael Kupperman

edition 2003

First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition 2003
Who Moved My Soap?

Also by Andy Borowitz

The Trillionaire Next Door

Rationalizations to Live By (with Henry Beard and John Boswell)

SIMON & SCHUSTER
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2003 by Andy Borowitz

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition 2003

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales: 1-800-456-6798 or business@simonandschuster.com

Illustrations Michael Kupperman

Designed by Karolina Harris

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Borowitz, Andy.

Who moved my soap? : the CEOs guide to surviving in prison / Andy Borowitz

p. cm

ISBN 0-7432-5142-3

ISBN 13: 9780743251426

eBook ISBN 13: 9781439129739

1. PrisonersUnited StatesHumor. 2. ExecutivesProfessional ethicsUnited StatesHumor. I. Title.

HV9471.B67 2003

365.60207dc21

2003045731

Who Moved My Soap?

If youre a convicted CEO whos heading to prison for the first time, let me just say this: You should be totally stoked. A trip to the slammer could be the best career move you ever made, and after a few weeks behind bars, youll be kicking yourself for not getting convicted sooner.

Surprised? I thought you might be. Youve probably bought into the conventional wisdom that a prison sentence is some kind of punishment, a fate to be avoided at all costs. Well, you wont see me slicing that brand of baloney. If you follow the simple advice in this book, youll discover what successful CEO convicts everywhere already know: If time is money, then hard time is hard cash.

Are you drinking the Kool-Aid yet? If not, perhaps a few facts will change your mind:

Thanks to the rising tide of corporate scandals, former CEOs are pouring into Americas penitentiaries in record numbers, the biggest migration of white-collar criminals into the penal system since the fall of the Nixon administration. Within the next five years, one out of four CEOs in the United States will be convicted and sent to jail, while another one out of four will flee the country in a single-engine plane with gold coins and priceless diamonds sewn into his underpants. Still another one out of four will plea-bargain his way into performing community service, such as teaching inner city youths and the elderly how to destroy incriminating documents and create fictitious off-the-books partnerships.

But that still leaves a whole lot of CEOs heading up the rivergood news for you, because youll be far from alone. Once youre in prison, if you look to your right, and then to your left, your chances of recognizing someone from your business school class will be better than 50 percent, and even better than that if you went to Harvard. According to a recent study, prison construction in the United States is lagging well behind the pace of CEO convictions, and by the end of the decade there will be as many as one hundred thousand CEOs behind barsroughly ten thousand times the number of people who are looking forward to the next Meg Ryan film.

Will prison change these chief executive offenders? Based on anecdotal evidence, just the opposite is occurring. With each passing day, these barbarians at the prison gate are reinventing prison as we know it, turning up their noses at such outmoded goals of incarceration as rehabilitation and paying ones debt to society. Being thrown in a cell hasnt kept them from thinking outside the boxfar from it. When an incarcerated CEO wakes up in the morning, he doesnt see the concrete walls, the barbed wire, or the ferocious guard dogshe sees an ideal place to grow a new business, far from the prying eyes of the SEC and the Department of Justice. The inmate of yesteryear was always looking for a fight; todays convicted CEO is in search of excellence.

So before you head off to the pokey, get over that shopworn myth about prison being a bad thing. If youre smart enough and savvy enoughand the fact that youve bought this book is a pretty good sign that you are bothyoull emerge from your time in the joint more productive, more innovative, and millions of dollars wealthier than you were on the day that the prison guard first checked you for lice.

Not buying this? I know what youre thinking: Im just another slick con man, primed to sell you a bill of goods and make out like a bandit.

Well, guess again: Im a convicted CEO myself.

Thats right. And Im not just some run-of-the-mill, caught-with-his-hands-in-the-cookie-jar CEO, either: Just last year, Forbes named me one of Americas Top 100 Convicted CEOs, putting my police mug shot on the cover of that esteemed publication. Yes, Forbes gave me my props, and in the select fraternity of imprisoned chief executives, it doesnt get any better than that.

I can tell you still have your doubts. If hes so important, you say, your words slurred by the cocktail of antidepressants and tranquilizers youve been on ever since your verdict was announced, why did he even bother to write this book? A good question that deserves a good answerand this time, for a change, I wont take the Fifth.

Before I took my first fateful ride on the so-called dog bus to prison, shackled to a fellow convict who had a picture of the cast of The Facts of Life tattooed on his back, I paid a visit to my local bookstore, hoping to find some reference work that might help ease my transition from CEO to CBO (Cell Block Occupant). What did I find there? Cookbooks. Cat books. Book after book of poetry by the pop singer Jewel, all drastically reduced. But nowhere did I find a book preparing the former CEO for his stay in prison, even though convicted CEOs represent the fastest-growing segment of the reading public today. I vowed with all my heart to correct this sad state of affairs, and once I received assurances from my attorney that the thousands of shareholders currently engaged in class-action lawsuits against me could claim no share of my publishing royalties, I buckled down and began to write.

Writing a book while in prison is not an easy task. When an inmate in the cell next to mine started screaming, Press the bunk, punk!!! at the top of his lungs, I could not ask him to keep it down; when I dropped my pen on the floor, I was afraid to pick it up. Yet, somehow, I prevailed, and you are now holding the fruits of my efforts in your sweaty, trembling hands.