To be honest, I haven`t really followed his story in depth since... well, the initial event. It`s been a few years. It actually took a couple of minutes for it to click as I hadn`t even heard his name for years.
I`m not an expert, but there are people who absolutely love him and who think that everything against him was unfair... And there are others who hate him and who think that things were way too lax on him because of how famous he was.
In the middle just kind of watching, I was pretty disappointed in how HE handled the accusations.
As for his punishment being "over the top"... He only got 2.5 years, most of which has been turned to probation and bouts of house arrest.
I agree that part of it has to do with his public image, but have a bit of trouble thinking that it was unjustified.
He didn`t just falsify things to get more money... He flaunted - and I mean FLAUNTED that money. He talked constantly about how it was his business skill and honest practices that made him successful.
Turns out he`d been deceiving investors and doing all sorts of creative math to "make" money.
It is one thing to move around assets to make a company look like it`s more successful in order to keep confidence - the thing most companies are guilty of on some level - but another to do it for personal profit that is flaunted to an extreme.