Back in September 2008, I posed the following question (in "Enforcement Action: Oncology Edition"):

So which is worse — inducing shareholders to purchase $6.5 million of your company’s stock by falsely depicting the company as being on the verge of success curing cancer? Or defrauding a federal judge by falsely depicting yourself as having cancer such that you are so ill that you cannot participate in a potential SEC case against you?

That age-old question can never be answered, of course, but the person who was indicted for falsely representing to a federal judge that he was terminally ill with colon cancer and unable to participate in the SEC case against him was sentenced this week. On October 5, Howard Richman, the former head of regulatory affairs of Biopure Corporation, was sentenced to three years incarceration, three years of supervised release, and a $50,000 fine for among other things lying and obstructing justice in the SEC action against him. The indictment alleged that, to perpetuate his lie, Richman provided the court with false affidavits and fabricated letters from a physician. He also previously admitted that he pretended to be his doctor in a phone call with his lawyer so that the lawyer would tell the judge that his cancer had spread and that he was undergoing chemotherapy.