Indeed, in many ways, Enron was a legal fraud. Fastow’s guilty plea—and Skilling’s and Lay’s convictions—were due to specific incidents where prosecutors could show that the Enron executives had crossed the line. But they didn’t speak to the larger fact that Enron’s financials were basically a complete misrepresentation of reality. “I knew that what I was doing was misleading,” Fastow told the Las Vegas crowd. “But I didn’t think it was illegal. I thought: That’s how the game is played. You have a complex set of rules, and the objective is to use the rules to your advantage.”
