In the common view, Mark Bryers is a lucky, if unpopular, man.
It is a perception with which it is hard to find fault.
Last week, the co-founder of the failed Blue Chip investment company - who had earlier pleaded guilty to a number of charges - escaped without a jail term when he appeared in the Auckland District Court.
Instead, he was sentenced to 75 hours' community work and a fine of $37,000.
His property investment company had collapsed in 2008, owing about 3000 investors more than $80 million.
There were gasps in the court from those investors present, many of whom had lost their houses and savings, when it became evident that Bryers would not serve a custodial sentence.
As he entered the court some had called him "scum", others "thief" and still more "low life".
After hearing of his sentence they pronounced their own verdicts outside the court: "he needed to go to jail," said one; another insisted he should "pay the price"; a third said she felt "absolutely let down by the justice system".
Bryers had faced and pleaded guilty to 34 charges laid by the Ministry of Economic Development in relation to the running of companies in the Blue Chip group.
He was fined $33,750 on the two main charges of failing to complete financial statements related to Northern Crest Investments Ltd, formerly known as Blue Chip Financial Services.
He was given 75 hours' community service on charges relating to the Bribanc Property Group; there were minor fines on charges relating to other liquidated companies.
Notwithstanding the fact - as pointed out by the ministry lawyer - that the charges were not of fraud, the penalties imposed seem extraordinarily light when set against the loss and suffering of those who invested with Bryers and the Blue Chip group.
The full story of those companies and their tangled and ill-fated ventures has yet to be unravelled.
So while it is important not to pass judgement on imagined or supposed transgressions, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the law of this country - while increasingly punitive on property crimes of a comparatively petty nature - is much more forgiving when the perpetrator habitually wears a white collar.
If the impact on the victims' lives were to be a measure of the punishment meted then, as the judge pointed out, there was an entire "telephone directory" of testimony to point to, in addition to Bryers' "egregious lapse of duty" as a company director.
Because of the harm and stress caused, Bryers' transgressions carry a heavy emotional freight.
And yet, the "crimes" were not of a fraudulent nature; and neither was any investor forced into a relationship with him and his companies.
There are similarities here with a number of other failed finance and investment companies: the interest rates, yields and conditions they promised seemed particularly attractive.
While there is further clarification - and tightening - to be done around the regulations pertaining to such companies, individuals cannot escape a large degree of responsibility for their part in the transactions.
By their very nature investments carry degrees of risk and the higher the promised returns, generally the greater the risk.
Caveat emptor - buyer beware - is a long-held principle that many investors over the past five years or so have, in the rush to cash in on attractively high interest rates, appeared to forget.
This is a harsh, but valid reality, just as is the fact that a person cannot be punished for crimes which he has not been shown to have committed.
That said, suggestions that Bryers and his lawyer may yet contemplate an appeal against sentence have to be regarded with incredulity.
Bryers is now employed in Australia as a "consultant" for the only remaining part of his former empire, Northern Crest Investments.
A probation report examining the former Blue Chip boss's ability to pay a fine indicated that he was earning up to $144,000 a year.
As if that were not sufficient salt in the wounds of former investors, the idea, as submitted by his lawyer, that he would find it difficult to complete his community work and maintain his "employment" certainly would have been.
Seventy-five hours' community work is barely two weeks, and if Bryers finds that prospect miserable, so much the better.
If common sense is any kind of guide, the sentence should stand.
For when it comes to misery, some of his former clients have been handed a life sentence.
