Details, details!

Last night John Kerry singled out a local Philadelphia woman as an example of how America can do better:

BOSTON - In his acceptance speech last night, to flesh out his theme that "America can do better," John Kerry mentioned a number of people who suffered misfortune in the last few years.

One was Deborah Komins, a psychotherapist from Center City Philadelphia - whose name he mispronounced as "Kromins."

Kerry described her as a woman who had worked and saved "all her life only to find out that her pension has disappeared into thin air - and the executive who looted it has bailed out on a golden parachute."

Komins, 68, who has never met Kerry, said last night in a phone interview that she lost an unspecified nest egg when "the stock market went bust. I thought I had a safe investment in mutual funds, but the fund invested heavily in Enron stock. It went down the tubes."

Former Enron Corp. executives have been charged in connection with the December 2001 collapse of the company. The Securities and Exchange Commission contends that Kenneth Lay, Enron's former chairman, personally profited by selling stock, pulling in more than $90 million.

But did Lay actually loot this woman's pension? (Actually, the victim, Dr. Komins, described her investment as a "nest egg," so I'm not sure it's properly called "her pension." Plus, she's still working -- as a psychiatrist/psychotherapist in Center City Philadelphia -- so I suspect she's not quite as ragged and bereft as Kerry's audience imagined.) Whether Lay even looted Enron is questionable: he manipulated the books to conceal losses and sold off stock before the losses were generally known. Dr. Komins had invested money in a mutual fund which owned Enron stock. How Lay's conduct looted her pension escapes me.

From what little I remember about corporate law, fraudulent accounting practices and insider trading are not the same thing as looting (the misappropriation of corporate assets). And even if Lay did engage in looting, he didn't loot from Dr. Komins' mutual fund.

Except Kerry says he did.

Can anyone explain?