I appreciate Mr. Zinn's taking the time to expose what happened to him, so that everyone else can understand the risk that the current system brings to us all. I think you will find his tale to be one that everyone should know.
Although he thought he was relying on legal advice about how to raise money for a political candidate, he was actually being led down the garden path. As CEO of a company under attack from hostile shareholders, the opposing shareholders used the resulting mistakes to get federal prosecutors and the IRS after him. In the process, a company which violated the law more than his company did was given immunity to get testimony against Mr. Zinn. Although this doesn't seem fair, it certainly is the way the system works. Prosecutors also relied on the accusations of people who were trying to negotiate favorable settlements from the company on other matters.
Faced with many unpalatable choices and on the advice of legal counsel, Mr. Zinn chose not to explain himself to the prosecutors. They threw the book at him. Even after he plea bargained to a reduced sentence to get "easy" time in a low security facility, they harrassed him with grand jury dates which meant he had to spend most of this time in maximum security lock-ups and in very uncomfortable transporation.
After he got out of jail, he still had the scheming shareholders to deal with. It turned out that they had found every possible ally who would work with them, and had been stealing information from the company to make running the company harder.
All the shareholders were actually hurt by this because the legal and accounting costs of these investigations ran into the millions of dollars over the years. Also, management attention was diverted from making money.
Despite this, Mr. Zinn did succeed in helping the shareholders make a bundle. Some people made more than 30 times their investment, as a result.
Consider that Mr. Zinn is obviously a very talented, intelligent, and aggressive person. He also had a lot of personal and corporate money to help defend him. If he couldn't figure out what to do and avoid a lot of unpleasantness, what are your chances? Not very good, I'm afraid.
The strength of this book is that Mr. Zinn takes you inside his experiences that led up to and through the problems so you can consider what you would have done. He also shares the emotional turmoil and pain associated with the problems, for him, his family, and for those he worked with.
If you know of anyone who is being investigated, I suggest that you give them a copy of this book. I would also encourage anyone in that situation to find a way to explain themselves to those who are conducting the investigation. Before everyone has drawn a lot of conclusions, there may be some lattitude to avoid worse problems.
There are many other new laws on the books (not discussed in this book) that make the rights of ordinary citizens quite small. I encourage you to become familiar with these risks so that you can conduct your life in ways that will reduce those risks, while finding appropriate ways to get the laws changed.
Live free!