Boeing settles 737 MAX fraud as a corporation while arguing individual executives bear no criminal responsibility for the same conduct
CASE A
United States v. The Boeing Company (4:21-cr-00005, deferred-prosecution agreement → guilty plea 2024)
Boeing entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to defraud the FAA in connection with 737 MAX MCAS disclosures; agreed to a $487M fine and oversight monitorship. Corporate position: the company accepts responsibility for its employees' conduct as a corporate act.Source ↗
CASE B
United States v. Forkner (4:21-cr-00268; sole indicted Boeing employee — acquitted 2022)
In the only individual criminal prosecution arising from the same MCAS fraud, Boeing's position (through company-witness testimony and document production) was that the relevant senior managers had no knowledge of the safety-critical changes and that the MCAS-disclosure failures were the work of one technical pilot acting individually. Forkner was acquitted.Source ↗
// THE PARADOX
Boeing the corporation pleaded guilty to defrauding the FAA — admitting, in its corporate capacity, that the criminal acts occurred. In the parallel individual prosecution of the only Boeing employee charged, the company's posture (and the resulting acquittal) was that no individual senior decision-maker had the criminal mens rea, leaving a single technical pilot as the only person plausibly responsible. The corporate entity is the only criminal; no human being acting for the entity is a criminal. The same conduct was sufficient to convict the company and insufficient to convict any individual member of the company.