After seeing this story at Forbes, headlined "U.S. Agrees Guilty Billionaire Shouldn't Go to Jail," I may have to rethink my assumption that federal prosecutors never are willing to go soft on any white-collar criminals. Here are the details:

In his plea agreement, [Igor] Olenicoff, 65, admitted he lied on his 1998 through 2004 tax returns when he answered "no" to a question asking if he had ownership or authority over any financial accounts in foreign countries. In fact, he had accounts in the Bahamas, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Britain. As part of the plea deal, Olenicoff paid $52 million in back federal taxes, interest and civil fraud penalties and agreed to bring all the money in his foreign accounts (believed to total in the hundreds of millions) back to the U.S.

Forbes estimates the self-made, Russian-born Olenicoff, who came to the U.S. at age 15, is now worth $1.6 billion. While the false-tax-return charge is punishable by up to three years in jail, Olenicoff's deal with prosecutors, together with federal sentencing guidelines, made it unlikely he would get more than six months. Then last month, a U.S. probation officer filed a pre-sentencing report recommending Olenicoff get off with just one year of probation and a $3,500 criminal fine.