Remember 2008?

The number of people who went to jail specifically for their roles in the 2008 financial crisis varies depending on the scope and definition of the prosecutions considered. Here’s a breakdown based on available data:

In the United States, the most notable case is that of Kareem Serageldin, a former Credit Suisse executive, who was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2013 for mismarking bond prices to hide losses during the crisis. He is often cited as the only Wall Street executive jailed directly for actions tied to the core events of the 2008 financial meltdown. However, this does not mean he was the only person prosecuted in connection to the broader fallout.

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), which oversaw the $700 billion bailout funds distributed after the crisis, reported significant enforcement actions. By 2016, SIGTARP investigations had led to criminal charges against 402 individuals, including 97 bankers, with 35 of those bankers receiving prison sentences. These cases largely involved fraud related to the misuse of TARP funds rather than the direct causation of the crisis itself, such as subprime mortgage practices. Examples include Edward Woodard, former CEO of the Bank of the Commonwealth, who received a 23-year sentence for hiding financial troubles at his bank.

Globally, the picture expands. Research by the Financial Times identified 47 bankers worldwide who were sentenced to jail time for roles directly linked to the crisis or the collapse of their institutions, with Iceland accounting for 25 of these cases. Iceland took a notably aggressive stance, prosecuting executives from its major banks—such as Kaupthing, Landsbanki, and Glitnir—resulting in sentences ranging from months to several years for crimes like fraud and market manipulation. In Ireland, seven bankers were jailed, though some convictions were later quashed. In the U.S., beyond Serageldin, prosecutions of lower-level players—like mortgage brokers and loan officers—numbered in the hundreds, with 324 convictions reported by SIGTARP for mortgage-related fraud contributing to the crisis.

In contrast to earlier financial scandals, such as the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s (over 1,000 convictions) or the early 2000s accounting scandals (e.g., Enron and WorldCom executives), the 2008 crisis saw remarkably few high-profile Wall Street executives face criminal charges. Major banks paid billions in fines—nearly $190 billion by 2015—but these were civil settlements, not criminal penalties, and no top CEOs from firms like Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, or JPMorgan Chase were imprisoned.

The total number of incarcerations thus ranges from a narrow focus on one (Serageldin) in the U.S. for core crisis actions, to dozens (e.g., 35 via SIGTARP plus others globally) when including bailout fraud and international cases, to hundreds when encompassing lower-level mortgage fraud. The exact figure depends on how one defines “the 2008 financial crisis,” but the consensus is that accountability at the highest levels was limited compared to the scale of the economic damage, which saw U.S. household net worth drop by over $16 trillion and global markets lose around $30 trillion.