A deal for AOL regarding their fraud charges?

The legal system is fascinating to me. A corporation goes and defrauds someone and they have to pay a fine. However if I was to go out and attempt to defraud someone, not only would I have to pay a huge fine. I’d also have the opportunity to spend some ‘quality time’ in a concrete honeymoon suite as the new bride of some dude named ‘Rock’.

Well, it looks like AOL is on its way to driving this point home as they are ‘offered a deal’. InfoWorld reports that Time Warner (AOL) has agreed to pay out the tidy sum of $500 million to clear up the DOJ and SEC charges against them.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) will announce a settlement deal it has reached with Time Warner concerning accounting issues with its America Online (AOL) Internet division on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the matter.

AOL has been the subject of investigations by the DOJ and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into its past accounting practices, including advertising arrangements with smaller Internet company partners and its methods for reporting subscriber numbers.