Want to bag a half billion? Here’s a step-by-step plan that almost worked:

1. Buy your way onto the boards of publicly traded companies.

2. Set up a labyrinth of offshore accounts and sham companies in the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands.

3. Pay a lawyer a lot of dough to consistently lie about who really controls your offshore edifices.

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4. Transfer your stock options and other equity-based compensation to these secret accounts. Buy even more stock when the timing is right.

5. Trade on the insider information you receive from the publicly traded companies that you control as a board member. For instance, you can load up your accounts before mergers are announced and then sell on the announcements.

6. Never disclose to the Securities and Exchange Commission that you are doing this. When you dump the massive amount of shares you secretly accumulate, you don’t want to alarm other investors and push down the price of your own stock as you sell it.

7. Use your riches to buy ranches in Aspen, Colo., a horse ranch in Dallas, vacation homes and properties for your family members. Acquire tens of millions of dollars worth of art and collectibles. Donate $10 million to have your alma mater name a building after you. Give $2.5 million to your church.

This is the scheme that Texas tycoons Sam and Charlie Wyly pulled off from 1992 to 2004, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission in a civil complaint.

The Wyly brothers say there was no such scheme. These offshore accounts were just part of their retirement plan and they didn’t really control them.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what they say now. They may have to forfeit as much as $550 million after a jury found them guilty of the SEC’s allegations on Monday.

The verdict will be hardest on Sam, 79, who in 2010 said this case would soon be forgotten. “I think it’s good politics to beat up on big companies and rich people,” he told The New York Times.

Charlie, on the other hand, died in his Porsche at age 77 in a 2011 crash. He left this life much like another famous Texan, former Enron chieftain Ken Lay, who had a fatal heart attack in Aspen in 2006 between his conviction and sentencing on criminal fraud charges. Since his death, the SEC case has targeted Charlie Wyly’s estate.

Defense attorney Stephen Susman reportedly told jurors that the biggest assets the brothers stood to lose were their reputations and their legacies.

“Are they going to be known, as the SEC would have it, as liars and fraudsters?” Susman said. “Or are they going to be known as good businessmen who tried to follow the law?”

Charlie Wylie and his wife donated $20 million to help build a performing arts center in Dallas, which includes the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre. The Wyly brothers and their wives also donated $2.5 million to Republican candidates and committees over 20 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Sam Wyly was listed on Forbes’ list of 400 Richest Americans until 2010 with a net worth of $1 billion. And the Wyly brothers were long celebrated for a series of fabulous business successes, from Bonanza Steakhouses and Michaels Stores Inc. to Sterling Software, which they sold to Computer Associates for $4 billion in 2000.

It was on the boards of Michaels US:MIK , Sterling and Scottish Annuity & Life Holdings Ltd., or Scottish Re, where they pulled off their offshore trading schemes, according to the SEC.

“We are deeply disappointed by the jury’s decision,” Susman said in a statement following the verdict. “Sam and Charles Wyly acted in good faith. We will continue to fight for justice through the next phases of the legal process.”

So the battle goes on.

Already, this case has taken six years to investigate and another four years to win in court. That’s a full decade in which the aging brothers could continue living large while lashing back at the SEC as if the agency were solely motivated by resentment of the rich rather than violations of securities laws.

It took the SEC so long to pursue this single case against a couple of billionaire cowboys from Texas that you have to wonder how many other corporate board directors have been doing the exact same thing with their own secret offshore accounts. Clearly, there’s a huge payoff if you don’t get caught. You could even short your own stock as you drive your company into the ground, as so many board directors do.

From what I can tell from reading the SEC’s complaint, the Wylys got caught because of some inconsistencies in their filings as corporate directors. They got sloppy with their paperwork over a long period of time and someone at the SEC noticed.

There are smarter men than these guys in corporate boardrooms across the land. Who knows how long they can keep their paperwork straight? Or if the SEC has the resources to go after them.

“The Wylys violated the law by using a system of offshore trusts to conceal their transactions as directors of publicly traded companies,” said Andrew Ceresney, the SEC’s enforcement director, in a press release. “We will continue to hold accountable, and bring to trial when necessary, those who commit fraud no matter how complex their scheme or how hard they try to hide it.”

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