Quote Originally Posted by airshifter View Post
It's rare that a person can settle out of court if there is any strong case against them. Knowing BE has money, it would cost huge amounts to take his case to trial, at the risk of no recovery of money if he isn't proven guilty. Likewise Bernie knows being tied up in courts all costs him a great amount of money, time, frustrations, etc.

If you got charged with a traffic ticket for a minor offense would you waste countless time proving your innocence, or pay the small fine the way many people do? Being someone with a lot of money, Bernie's life is a lot easier just settling things out of court. He doesn't have much time left to spend his billions as it is, why waste some of that time?
Settling out of court is something you do if you're being sued. Bernie wasn't being sued, he was being tried for a criminal offence. A criminal offence for which the penalty would be years in prison, not a fine. I'm amazed to learn that a civilised country allows this kind of "settling out of court" for criminal trials.