Mr. Risinger got greedy. There is no need to go to jail. Just collect money from investors, charge a huge management fee along with a 25% carried interest. Drill crappy, close-in wells, all of which can be completed because depletion usually doesn't show up on logs and even if it did, your laymen investors won't recognize it.. Continue to charge management fees. Use fake names for wells so it is hard to check your track record. Buy time on radio stations and Fox news to add legitimacy. Buy yourself some awards.
But whatever you do, do not raid investors' funds to pay your salary. If you do, your independent auditors will smell a rat and quit. You will have to stop filing financials and you will sit around wondering why you killed the golden goose by going public. You can avoid all this stress by never ever going public. Sure people will eventually find out you can't find oil and the 10 year party will be over, but so what? Change the name of the company and start over.
