Emerging trend: I too am entitled to a million dollars

The last few years of ridiculously over-paid CEOs and hedge-fund bozos have produced a sickness where everyone seems to think that they need to make a few million dollars too.

Two Pennsylvania judges decide that they too are entitled to a million a year, so this is what they did:

Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan received a commission for every day they sent a child to private juvenile detention centres run by Pennsylvania Child Care and a sister company. The pay-offs came to $2.6m over seven years ... Hillary Transue, who is 15 and faced Mr Ciavarella without a lawyer, was sentenced to three months because she constructed a fake MySpace page ridiculing the assistant principal at her high school.

Meanwhile, a Florida professor took it upon himself to find a way to earn a million dollars:

Federal authorities raided the office of a University of Florida professor on Wednesday who, along with his wife, is suspected of defrauding NASA. ... investigators from the FBI and NASA said that since 1999, the government has awarded 13 contracts to the couple's company, New Era Technology Inc. (NETECH), and deposited $3.4 million into the company's corporate account. Investigators allege they diverted much of the money from the corporate account into personal accounts to buy cars and property.

I'm still looking for the third instance so that this can officially become a trend.