I will speak to the amendment. I don't believe that was the intent of the legislation to begin with.
Secondly, by putting this kind of amendment in place, we're diminishing the original intent. There are so many victims out there of white-collar crime, in particular the ones who are the hardest to deal with. We had witnesses today who are the most vulnerable people. They're our elderly people. They're the people who perhaps, like many in my community, have been able to save $60,000 or $70,000 in order to live out their lives with a little bit of dignity. But they're being scammed by someone who may scam only five or six people. Does that diminish their standing versus being part of a large Ponzi scheme? I don't think so. In fact, I think they're the most vulnerable people, the ones who actually suffer the most.
We heard our witnesses, the victim witnesses in particular—the gentleman here—describe to us tonight some of the things that happened to some of these people who were shamed and lost. Perhaps it may not have been a lot of money, in some people's eyes. But they have committed suicide, or they've been in psychological treatment for years and years as a result of this. It's basically been the ruination of their lives.
So to diminish the fact that there's a distinction between someone who wants to victimize these people, who does victimize them by defrauding them...to somehow say that's less than a mega fraudster, I don't buy that argument.
This amendment would say that we're going to categorize the types of fraudsters out there. We're going to say that there are the big, sophisticated fraudsters who get away with millions—and yes, we don't want to see those people have access to early parole—but we're also going to then say that there is a lesser scale. For example, if it's in a small community, if it's a trusted person who all of a sudden turns sour, and there are 10 people in the community who might have lost less than a certain threshold of money, but it may have been all they had.... I can personally relate to some people in that category. If they lost their $60,000 or $70,000, it would be the ruination of their lives. They're in their seventies or eighties. They're very vulnerable.
I cannot agree to these amendments for that reason.