Speaker 1: Now really.
Speaker 2: Now really well, Hello everyone, Hello to you Peter, and
Speaker 2: hello to you Jason.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 1: Hello. I'm going to do this whole episode never know
Speaker 1: what mood.
Speaker 2: And this is my authentic accent everyone previously this is
Speaker 2: a skepe.
Speaker 1: You'll see how this thematically plays in this.
Speaker 3: I didn't know better.
Speaker 1: I think you want to rush my friends.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of Really No Really. I am
Speaker 2: Jason Alexander, sitting here with my top three best friend,
Speaker 2: mister the box of Peter came in the box that's right.
Speaker 2: And this is really No Really, the podcast where we
Speaker 2: explore things that make us say really no really, that's
Speaker 2: exactly right now this one. This is kind of fascinating you, Peter.
Speaker 2: So Peter likes to.
Speaker 1: Complain to me. I don't know why me.
Speaker 2: I guess because we are friends and because I have
Speaker 2: to complain, all right, Sure, So he's watching Ozar's watching
Speaker 2: the wonderful series Ozark, which, by the way, I know
Speaker 2: Jason Bateman like a scoch.
Speaker 1: I've met Laura Linny. She's lovely.
Speaker 2: It's not like I'm familiar with people on the show.
Speaker 2: I like the show. I watch the show. I think
Speaker 2: it's a really well done show, Bravo to everyone involved.
Speaker 2: Peter will say to me a hundred times over.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous, stupid.
Speaker 2: You want a money launder? Why would you go to
Speaker 2: the Ozarks and open a strip club and a gambling boat?
Speaker 3: Please?
Speaker 2: Oh sure, that's not gonna draw attention. That is the
Speaker 2: stupidest idea I've ever heard. And I do want to
Speaker 2: point out that he came up with money laundering in
Speaker 2: the Ozarks as he had a gun to his head,
Speaker 2: So it wasn't you know, no.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no, no exactly. So here's the problem.
Speaker 1: I love the show too, and you went, really, no,
Speaker 1: really is somebody would really no, really?
Speaker 4: So we want to get an expert on to talk
Speaker 4: about that, and also talk about fraud money laundering in general,
Speaker 4: because there's so many stories of fraud and money laundering today.
Speaker 4: But let's get to the Ozark thing for a second.
Speaker 4: So Marty Bird's partner took off with drug money eight
Speaker 4: million dollars, and they said, you get a launder eight
Speaker 4: million bucks. He goes to Missouri to the Ozarks and
Speaker 4: the first thing you do is walk into a strip club.
Speaker 4: They don't know you, you don't know the neighborhood, and
Speaker 4: you're gonna start spending on cash, okay, cash business. And
Speaker 4: what you're gonna do is you're gonna say you're doing
Speaker 4: all these renovations and then you only have to show
Speaker 4: a little bit of the bill and just punk out
Speaker 4: of time.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: Then he goes to buy another business the same and
Speaker 4: within a second, these people are going, who is this guy?
Speaker 4: Why's he got the cash? Within a second and then
Speaker 4: season two or three, it's like Riverboat and you go, okay,
Speaker 4: why not just put a target on my back and
Speaker 4: say the government should check us out?
Speaker 3: Who are you? They're going to do a deep dive
Speaker 3: into you.
Speaker 4: Why wouldn't you go somewhere where you could disappear and
Speaker 4: launder money quietly?
Speaker 3: Well, you wouldn't draw atten.
Speaker 1: Where would that the.
Speaker 4: Brooklyn, the Bronx other okay, the brocuse me? How about the.
Speaker 3: South Midwest? Other cities where you're not that? Okay? Okay,
Speaker 3: So we have onn't a special guest.
Speaker 2: By the way, I don't want to spoilers. Five years
Speaker 2: the show ran five years one.
Speaker 4: But it was not fun. Did not want to say
Speaker 4: it was brilliant fun, the characters great.
Speaker 2: I just thought, all right, I'm happy to pursue this
Speaker 2: conversation because we have a wonder.
Speaker 3: Guest you introduce.
Speaker 1: You introduced that where sorry.
Speaker 2: He wasn't prepared for those of you who have not
Speaker 2: yet met our guest. Doctor Kelly Richmond Hope is the
Speaker 2: doctor Barry Jay Epstein is it Epstein or Epstein Epstein
Speaker 2: in Dowed Professor of Forensic Accounting at the pol University
Speaker 2: of Chicago, Illinois and a nationally recognized expert in risk
Speaker 2: forensic accounting and white collar prime research. She's the author
Speaker 2: of Fool Me Once, Scam Stories and Secrets from the
Speaker 2: trillion dollar Fraud Industry, which shows for an action and
Speaker 2: uncovering what makes perpetrators like Bernie Madoff heard of him
Speaker 2: and Elizabeth Holmes heard of her tick and delves into why.
Speaker 1: Victims can be so easily duped.
Speaker 2: And She also directed and produced the twenty seventeen award
Speaker 2: winning documentary All the Queen's Horses, which explores the largest
Speaker 2: municipal fraud in the United States.
Speaker 1: Istory Welcome, Doctor Kelly Richmond Boop.
Speaker 5: Hello, Hello, if.
Speaker 4: You like murder, I mean podcasting now is all about
Speaker 4: murder mysteries. When we always joked at the end of
Speaker 4: the year one of us is going to kill the other,
Speaker 4: and then year two is going to be a murder mystery.
Speaker 3: I'm massively popular, but well.
Speaker 5: Did a documentary about that.
Speaker 4: That documentary is so great. We're gonna tell that story
Speaker 4: in a minute. But what's cool about her too is
Speaker 4: she befriended a lot of white collar criminals and got
Speaker 4: to know and interview them to find out and dig
Speaker 4: deep about could you commits frock Andonic comment what is it?
Speaker 4: And identifies that the personality types, which is fascinating to me.
Speaker 4: And I've lined up story after story about money laundering
Speaker 4: and it's it's worrisome. But as far as Ozark, if
Speaker 4: we can start with that, am I right?
Speaker 2: Ear?
Speaker 1: Am I wrong?
Speaker 4: He immediately draws attention to himself by going into strip
Speaker 4: club and throwing money around. You don't know who the
Speaker 4: neighborhood is, who's talking to who. You haven't really figured
Speaker 4: out who knows who, who's doing stuff there, so you
Speaker 4: open yourself up for disaster, which, by the way, happened.
Speaker 1: You don't feel you're leading the witness with the way
Speaker 1: you've posed this question.
Speaker 3: I think I need all the help.
Speaker 1: I let me repose it with.
Speaker 2: Going to the Ozarks and investing in the strip club
Speaker 2: bring immediate No, it doesn't.
Speaker 5: I don't think I think he did the right thing.
Speaker 6: Wow when you think yeah, I mean, when you think
Speaker 6: about the three steps of money laundering, placement, layering, and integration,
Speaker 6: you have to find a cash based business in a
Speaker 6: really remote area. Because you think about those types of
Speaker 6: businesses don't question the money. They really don't. I mean,
Speaker 6: if you go and spend ten grand a cash and
Speaker 6: a strip club, no one's going to question you. So
Speaker 6: no one was really going to question Marty when he
Speaker 6: went in and said, here's one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: I want to revamp this whole place.
Speaker 1: Because they're like, all right, all right, see from you.
Speaker 3: I listened from him. I don't take it now. I
Speaker 3: say thank you for pointing that out. Server Boat.
Speaker 1: Riverboat was a good escalation or stupid good escalation.
Speaker 6: I mean it's, you know, casino driven. There's a lot
Speaker 6: of cash coming through, coming in, coming out. No one's
Speaker 6: gonna question when cash is being depositive a from a casino.
Speaker 6: So it made sense to me, all right, and you
Speaker 6: love to see it. I mean it's risky, it's riddled
Speaker 6: with risk. I mean, that's what's interesting about money laundering
Speaker 6: is I think, of all the schemes, that's the hardest
Speaker 6: one to do because it's it's just stressful.
Speaker 5: I mean, just think about it.
Speaker 6: You gotta buy a business, you gotta inflate invoices. You
Speaker 6: got to say, Okay, we know this renovation might cost
Speaker 6: twenty thousand dollars, we're going to inflate it to fifty
Speaker 6: five or sixty thousand dollars so we can layer some
Speaker 6: additional unclean money on.
Speaker 1: Top of it.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's stressful.
Speaker 6: So it's no surprise when a money laundering scheme gets
Speaker 6: caught because it's complex to keep it going.
Speaker 4: So let me ask, because I got a couple of
Speaker 4: headlines here, it's amazing former Goldman Sachs investment bankers sentence
Speaker 4: to two point seven billion bribery and money laundering scheme.
Speaker 4: Banks you're a slide on report of ramp and money
Speaker 4: laundering crypto platform. It's a lot of charging money laundering.
Speaker 4: Now Global banks US cracked down. I mean, it's olikar.
Speaker 4: Is every major bank in global bank involved?
Speaker 3: In mind?
Speaker 4: It seems like every article implies banks can be bought.
Speaker 4: There's so much money that somebody within a banking system
Speaker 4: is bribable.
Speaker 5: Can banks be bought?
Speaker 6: You know, I think banks have a lot of protocols
Speaker 6: that are set that are put in place so they
Speaker 6: can't be bought. But you know, with any rule, you
Speaker 6: can get around it. I'm not going to say on
Speaker 6: a podcast that banks can be bought because somebody.
Speaker 2: I agree to that rise three times a few And
Speaker 2: by the way, we're still looking for sponsorships, so let's
Speaker 2: not get to yes.
Speaker 1: Wow. But I think what Peter's saying is that there
Speaker 1: seems to be ramping frauds.
Speaker 2: Forget that at the banking level, but you know, sort
Speaker 2: of on every level, there seems to be ramping fraud.
Speaker 1: Is there a reason? Why?
Speaker 2: Is it one of those things where there's actually more
Speaker 2: of it now than there was a couple generations back,
Speaker 2: or are we just hearing about it more?
Speaker 1: And is it so easy to do that everybody's doing it?
Speaker 5: So I think it's a couple of things that you
Speaker 5: just said.
Speaker 6: I think we're hearing about it more, but I think
Speaker 6: you're finding more people willing to try it out. So
Speaker 6: think about all the schemes and scams we saw during
Speaker 6: the pandemic and so when the PPP loans were announced,
Speaker 6: there were bankers and lawyers and doctors and chiropractors like
Speaker 6: willing to lie about their business to get more money.
Speaker 6: So the controls relaxed because the government wanted to help
Speaker 6: people put more money in the pockets of these business owners.
Speaker 6: And so it was set up almost to fail because
Speaker 6: the typical controls that were put in place were relaxed
Speaker 6: to help people.
Speaker 1: So I think.
Speaker 5: The schemes are pretty much the same.
Speaker 6: What I've noticed is the profile of those willing to
Speaker 6: engage in the schemes is a little bit different. So gone,
Speaker 6: in my opinion, Gone are the days of just these
Speaker 6: massive organized crime units that are taking everybody for their money.
Speaker 6: Now you have people like you or me that might
Speaker 6: try it. We might try We might get away with
Speaker 6: it a couple times and don't get caught. But we
Speaker 6: might get caught. We might not go to jail. We
Speaker 6: may people are willing to roll the dice to see
Speaker 6: what's going to happen. So I think you see more
Speaker 6: people willing to try it out to see what's going
Speaker 6: to happen.
Speaker 2: And I know this may not be a question that
Speaker 2: you can answer, but is that is that because there's
Speaker 2: more opportunity or more desperation or have.
Speaker 1: Are we culturally just more willing to lie and defraud?
Speaker 1: So this is the thing.
Speaker 6: I think that what has changed a lot about how
Speaker 6: what I think about my kids versus how I grew up.
Speaker 6: Wasn't exposed to the riches of celebrities, and we didn't
Speaker 6: see inside their homes, we didn't see inside their vacations.
Speaker 5: We didn't see people just showcasing this lavish lifestyle.
Speaker 1: You didn't know.
Speaker 6: I mean, you knew somebody might be on TV. You
Speaker 6: knew somebody might be the only the only time you
Speaker 6: saw it was what was the show lifestyle?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean that was it.
Speaker 6: And so even that was like wow, but you didn't
Speaker 6: see it the way you see it now on social media.
Speaker 6: So I think that this idea of I want to
Speaker 6: have that too, How can I get it? I'm going
Speaker 6: to try it out to see maybe.
Speaker 1: So the enticement has increased, basically enticement.
Speaker 6: And think about it, the enticement has increased, Like now
Speaker 6: if I just pick up my phone to go to Instagram,
Speaker 6: I can look and see what Rihanna did, maybe what
Speaker 6: she ate where she's traveling, Like I could live her
Speaker 6: life through Instagram, and that might make me feel a
Speaker 6: certain way where I might be willing to say, you
Speaker 6: know what, maybe just maybe I can and push this
Speaker 6: invoice through and maybe I won't get caught.
Speaker 5: So I think more people are willing to try.
Speaker 4: Check fraud is going through the roof now. And I
Speaker 4: found out in one of the mailboxes near the bank
Speaker 4: they'd put sticky stuff so that the letter doesn't go
Speaker 4: all the way down and people come fish out your check.
Speaker 4: Wash it what they call where they actually take your
Speaker 4: name off put a different name on a different amount.
Speaker 3: And that happened to me. It's easy, it's and it's
Speaker 3: about mailbox fishing.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is like going back to like the
Speaker 4: fifties taking envelopes on a mailbox automatic.
Speaker 6: Think about when you see that flag up that means
Speaker 6: there's something in there. Let me just peek and see
Speaker 6: what is. And another thing, you think you could probably
Speaker 6: go to YouTube right now and we can figure out
Speaker 6: all the steps on how to wash a check. It's
Speaker 6: so easy, and so people are willing to say, hey,
Speaker 6: let me try, let me see if I can get
Speaker 6: this through.
Speaker 1: That's crazy.
Speaker 2: I had got thought of that that a lot of
Speaker 2: the how tos of this are out there. So that's
Speaker 2: what to that extent to me, and please correct me
Speaker 2: if I'm wrong. The proliferation of fraud to me, has
Speaker 2: a direct correlation of our ethics, and I'm just wondering
Speaker 2: if there isn't if that isn't an issue.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, and we talk about ethics fraud in the
Speaker 6: classroom in a new way, you know. So there are
Speaker 6: now more classes on fraud and forensic accounty than there
Speaker 6: ever were before because to your point, it's just rampant.
Speaker 6: I think so many people can rationalize bad decisions, and
Speaker 6: we have to talk about it more and more and
Speaker 6: more than just when you join an organization sign the
Speaker 6: code of conduct, but we have to understand what are
Speaker 6: ethical breaches, what do they look like, what do they
Speaker 6: feel like. So one of the things that I did
Speaker 6: is I created this game. I should have sent it
Speaker 6: to you all. It's called the Fuomi Once Fraud Experience,
Speaker 6: And so you go through it and it'll tell you
Speaker 6: what type of perpetrator you would be. Would you be
Speaker 6: intentional perpetrator, would you be an accidental perpetrator, or would
Speaker 6: you be a righteous perpetrator? And we can talk about
Speaker 6: those three things as we move in our conversation. But
Speaker 6: what's interesting is how people can rationalize all of these
Speaker 6: bad decisions. For example, if you ordered a Louis Vuitton briefcase,
Speaker 6: it came to your house, and then on Tuesday another
Speaker 6: one came to your house, would you send it.
Speaker 5: Back or would you keep it?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 3: I would send it back. It's not mine.
Speaker 1: I believe I would send it back.
Speaker 3: I'd like to believe. How dare you well? I mean,
Speaker 3: you had to admit that you.
Speaker 6: Got it in large audiences, I probably have about six
Speaker 6: thousand responses at this point. Half of these corporate professionals,
Speaker 6: they could be CPAs, they could be internal auditors.
Speaker 5: Half the people say I'd keep it and I'd sell
Speaker 5: it to a friend.
Speaker 6: Half the people, probably less than half, would say they
Speaker 6: would send it back.
Speaker 3: With the people that keep it, do they have a
Speaker 3: rationale for that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was a company's mistake, not mine. I didn't
Speaker 6: ask for it, so I'm going to keep it. So
Speaker 6: what the problem is. I think we can justify these little,
Speaker 6: small ethical lapses, and that just that just becomes bigger
Speaker 6: and bigger when you get into corporation and you see
Speaker 6: that you have access to one hundred, one hundred million,
Speaker 6: two million, whatever the amount of zeros you want to
Speaker 6: put on the end of that number, And with just
Speaker 6: a easy click of a pin, you can make a
Speaker 6: fraudulent transaction and you can justify it, especially if the
Speaker 6: end result is good news for your company.
Speaker 5: Makes it easy, It makes it easy to rationalize why
Speaker 5: you should do it.
Speaker 3: Could you're doing?
Speaker 4: You a favorite this point because it's I saw the
Speaker 4: documentary and if people don't know this story, because it
Speaker 4: is one of the mind blower o Wells of all time.
Speaker 4: Is the greed to Clunwell's story because of who she is,
Speaker 4: her background, and what she was able to do and
Speaker 4: the guts that she to do this to perpetrate this crime,
Speaker 4: it's amazing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So Rita Crunwell, So I did a documentary came
Speaker 6: out in twenty seventeen, still lives in the world today
Speaker 6: because it's so crazy. So Rita Crunwell was the city comptroller,
Speaker 6: the finance person in this small town called Dixon, Illinois. Dixon,
Speaker 6: Illinois has about sixteen thousand people, So we're talking about
Speaker 6: small town USA. And what she was able to do
Speaker 6: over a twenty year period was embezzle about fifty three
Speaker 6: point seven million dollars in plain sight.
Speaker 1: So she.
Speaker 5: Lived out in the open.
Speaker 6: She owned over four hundred quarter horses and lived this
Speaker 6: lavish life style, really this double life. So by day
Speaker 6: she was this controller, a government employee, and by night
Speaker 6: she was this horsewoman, you know, in firs and going
Speaker 6: to horse competitions all around the country. She won about
Speaker 6: fifty two world championships in the quarterhorse division. Don't know
Speaker 6: if anybody has a quarter horse out there, but if
Speaker 6: you do, then you know who Rita is. And how
Speaker 6: she got discovered was by the city clerk who reported
Speaker 6: to her and noticed that there were these unusual transactions
Speaker 6: coming out of an account that Kathy Swanson wasn't aware of,
Speaker 6: and she was.
Speaker 5: Like, huh, this looks odd.
Speaker 6: I don't know what to do with this, so I'm
Speaker 6: just going to tell my mayor about that. She reported
Speaker 6: to the mayor Burke, and they launched an investigation to
Speaker 6: get their own little personal investigation, and then contacted the FBI,
Speaker 6: and the rest is history. Rita was sentenced to nineteen
Speaker 6: years and seven months in federal prison and during COVID
Speaker 6: she got released early. The end of the story of
Speaker 6: probably from Rita's perspective, it does well.
Speaker 4: We should also mention Rita did not have a college education.
Speaker 4: She was like an assistant when she started.
Speaker 6: She graduated from high school, started working for the city
Speaker 6: and a princess type program.
Speaker 5: And you know, she didn't have a top MBA. She
Speaker 5: didn't work on Wall Street.
Speaker 1: She just worked.
Speaker 5: You know, she learned the system and knew the system
Speaker 5: so well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, she was able to take money just so
Speaker 2: not only was she scamming the city, but how did
Speaker 2: she how did she account for it in her tax returns?
Speaker 1: Did she have two sets of books?
Speaker 6: Well, something that one of the reasons why I always
Speaker 6: say everybody needs to take an accounting class is something
Speaker 6: that we talk about, like the first day in accounting
Speaker 6: is the accounting equation assets equals liabilities plus stockode ex equity.
Speaker 6: The interesting thing to your question is because financial statements
Speaker 6: have to balance. She was taking money out, so she
Speaker 6: had to put fraudulent transactions in to make those financial
Speaker 6: statements balance. So people were looking at lies when they
Speaker 6: were looking at the financial statements overall, if they knew
Speaker 6: what they were looking at. So this is why auditors
Speaker 6: tend to get in trouble because the auditors come in
Speaker 6: and they say, okay, the financial statements reflect accurately.
Speaker 5: What management or the leaders of an organization are saying.
Speaker 6: And so auditors get in trouble when fraud happens because
Speaker 6: everyone says, well, why did you sign off that these
Speaker 6: financial statements were okay? So how Rita was able to
Speaker 6: get away with it is still shocking because there were
Speaker 6: so many people that looked at the financial statements. So
Speaker 6: how she was able to execute the fraud was really simple.
Speaker 6: She just moved money from one account to the next.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 6: And because most people don't like talking about money, they
Speaker 6: don't care about accounting, when you find a person that
Speaker 6: is really good at managing the books, you sort of
Speaker 6: let them be, leave them alone, You don't ask a
Speaker 6: lot of questions. And so that's who Rita was, so
Speaker 6: it made it easy for her to steal the money.
Speaker 4: The other thing though, that blows me away about this
Speaker 4: was the quarter horses, et cetera, her other life, but
Speaker 4: this town did not have that big an account. She
Speaker 4: took fifty three million dollars from a municipality that only
Speaker 4: made how much money on a monthly weekly.
Speaker 5: About six to eight million dollars was the annual.
Speaker 1: How do you see?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you're right, so she sow some years were bigger
Speaker 6: takes than other years, so it wasn't like a consistent
Speaker 6: amount over this twenty year period.
Speaker 5: But you're right.
Speaker 6: I mean she pretty much took all the money they had,
Speaker 6: which is why I sometimes laugh and say she.
Speaker 1: Was really.
Speaker 6: Like, how do you take that amount of money and
Speaker 6: then still keep a town running and keep the lights on?
Speaker 5: And she did so she was pretty good. I gotta
Speaker 5: give it to her.
Speaker 1: You know, you gotta a plug talent. You gotta a
Speaker 1: plug talent.
Speaker 3: She worked, her bonds, she worked.
Speaker 1: She was one of the horses slack.
Speaker 4: I read that, well you know what else too, and
Speaker 4: this just makes me think of something. It's also a
Speaker 4: weird time as far as celebrity. Anna di Verner or
Speaker 4: whatever her name is, who had the fake identity, she's
Speaker 4: not writing articles and has an art show serhos, what's
Speaker 4: her name? Elizabeth Wims is out and giving interviewers and
Speaker 4: like that. She was a Robinhood, one of your.
Speaker 6: Robbin Hue to make we turned these people into a celebrity.
Speaker 6: But I think we are so fascinated that someone had
Speaker 6: the balls to do that that we're just like, really,
Speaker 6: like you really did that, Like you really thinking about
Speaker 6: inventing Anna in that Netflix series, Like you really went
Speaker 6: into a bank and faked a whole business, had a
Speaker 6: fake voice on the other side of the phone and
Speaker 6: the bank was calling and it was I mean, you
Speaker 6: had all that setup.
Speaker 5: You really did that. I mean you just think, wow,
Speaker 5: like you're pretty bold.
Speaker 2: So for the uninitiated, would you can you walk us
Speaker 2: very quickly through what you described as the three types
Speaker 2: of fraudulent personalities and also the most common method not okay,
Speaker 2: not the specifics of the weapons, but what kind of
Speaker 2: overall methodology they used to scam people with.
Speaker 1: So with the.
Speaker 6: Intentional perpetrators, that's the first category I start with. That's
Speaker 6: what true crime podcasts shows are made of. Ozark for example,
Speaker 6: they would be intentional perpetrators, so they know the inside
Speaker 6: of the system they intend to defraud. That's the whole point,
Speaker 6: to enrich themselves. They can be somewhat narcissistic, the bad
Speaker 6: side of narcissistic, because I think we're all narcissistic in
Speaker 6: some kind of way, but they're the bad version of narcissism,
Speaker 6: and they don't think the rules apply to them, and
Speaker 6: so they express a type of aggression that is tend
Speaker 6: to be rewarded but can also be detrimental to an organization.
Speaker 6: That's an intentional perpetrator. The reason why I start with
Speaker 6: that category is because most people don't identify with an
Speaker 6: intentional perpetrator, so but are made off. You know, most
Speaker 6: people don't see themselves as successful enough to be a
Speaker 6: made off, so they're like.
Speaker 5: Ah, that's that's that's what they do.
Speaker 6: But these other two categories, the reason why that I
Speaker 6: created those is because I wanted people to understand their
Speaker 6: own selves in this fraud cycle. And so if you
Speaker 6: could be anything, you might be an accidental perpetrator or
Speaker 6: a righteous perpetrator. Now, an accidental perpetrator is a people pleaser,
Speaker 6: team player. The boss asked them to do something and
Speaker 6: they don't push back, They never say no, and they
Speaker 6: don't ask any questions. You may know somebody like that
Speaker 6: you and may be that person. You know, like someone
Speaker 6: David might say, Hey, I just need you to sign
Speaker 6: this check. You trust David, so you're gonna just say
Speaker 6: you're just gonna sign it. For all you know that
Speaker 6: was a fraudulent check, and you trust, David, you just
Speaker 6: went ahead and now you're in trouble. FBI's knocking at
Speaker 6: your door because this check is bad. Just using it
Speaker 6: as an example, you didn't intend to personally enrich yourself.
Speaker 6: You were just sort of following the boss's orders. That's
Speaker 6: an accidental perpetrator and could be a very professionally trained person.
Speaker 6: It could be an accountant, it could be a lawyer,
Speaker 6: it could be a doctor, and you just don't push back.
Speaker 2: The last category is the right for one second, sure
Speaker 2: in that scenario, would I still be held accountable for that?
Speaker 1: Or would I be a ficial You sure would. So
Speaker 1: there's that part of I didn't know. It is not
Speaker 1: an excuse, Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 6: It's not a defense, especially if you are a doctor,
Speaker 6: a CPA, any person that has a fiduciary responsibility to know.
Speaker 6: To say I didn't know, it's not a good reason
Speaker 6: you should have known. You will go to jail, but
Speaker 6: maybe not as long as an intentional perpetrator. Okay, So
Speaker 6: you are held accountable. Absolutely, you're held accountable. The last category,
Speaker 6: the righteous perpetrator. Now, the righteous perpetrator follows the Robinhood syndrome.
Speaker 6: You know I'm going to steal from the rich to.
Speaker 5: Provide for the poor.
Speaker 6: You use your internal resources to help someone outside of
Speaker 6: your firm.
Speaker 5: Now, I argue that.
Speaker 6: Edward Snowden is a perfect example of a righteous perpetrator.
Speaker 6: And I say that because if you think about how
Speaker 6: he was portrayed in the media, half of the world
Speaker 6: I think thinks of him as a whistleblower, and half
Speaker 6: of the world thinks of him as a perpetrator. Now,
Speaker 6: he did break a law in doing what he shared,
Speaker 6: but he felt that he was doing it because the
Speaker 6: public needed to know. Now we talked about Elizabeth Holmes.
Speaker 6: Now I put Elizabeth Holmes at the beginning of her crime.
Speaker 6: She wanted to say she was first of all, scared
Speaker 6: of needles, hated draw getting drawing blood when she went
Speaker 6: to the doctor, and wanted to invent a technology that
Speaker 6: all you needed was just a fingerprick and you could
Speaker 6: run every test that you needed to be run if
Speaker 6: you were in a medical situation. If it worked, that
Speaker 6: would have helped so many people. So this idea of
Speaker 6: you know, just fake it till you make it is what.
Speaker 1: She lived by.
Speaker 6: Now we know she crossed over into the intentional perpetrator category.
Speaker 6: But at the very beginning. At her core, she wanted
Speaker 6: to help. She wanted to help society. She went to
Speaker 6: revolutionize the medical field, which she could have done if only.
Speaker 5: It worked right.
Speaker 1: I couldn't be Could you have been an intentional purpose?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I would hope not. I don't
Speaker 1: think so.
Speaker 2: You know, I listen, nobody's perfect. I think my ethics
Speaker 2: are are fairly strong, and I I always think about,
Speaker 2: you know, if I found the bag of money in
Speaker 2: the middle of the sidewalk, do I take it to
Speaker 2: the police and go this was sitting in the middle
Speaker 2: of the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: I would like to think that is exactly what I
Speaker 1: would do.
Speaker 4: I'm convinced that if I found a bag of money
Speaker 4: on a sidewalk, I would do the right thing, and
Speaker 4: somehow it would end.
Speaker 1: Up horrifictally horrible.
Speaker 6: I just know that I.
Speaker 4: Would be too paranoid. I would be too It's not
Speaker 4: because I'm a wonderful human being. I couldn't live the
Speaker 4: next day with the money under the bed because it
Speaker 4: would ruin the rest of my life. I could not
Speaker 4: enjoy anything because I'd been waiting for them to repel
Speaker 4: down the wad. Well, yeah, to playoff of that.
Speaker 2: I think the only way that I could ever rationalize
Speaker 2: is the nobody will be hurt if I do this scenario.
Speaker 2: But I the reason I think I walk a straight
Speaker 2: or narrow a line is I can't think of a
Speaker 2: situation where nobody would be impacted if I. If I
Speaker 2: keep this money, somebody's impacted. If I do this thing,
Speaker 2: somebody's impacted. So I just can't imagine.
Speaker 5: But you know what you might think.
Speaker 6: You might think to yourself, well, this money's already lost,
Speaker 6: so the impact that the person had lost some money
Speaker 6: had already happened. They probably already worked through this, so
Speaker 6: it wouldn't hurt them. They've already been hurt, so me
Speaker 6: keeping it's not going to hurt them anymore.
Speaker 5: So why shouldn't I.
Speaker 1: Just keep it?
Speaker 3: All right? So we got to ask you.
Speaker 4: So you sat face to face with white collar criminal,
Speaker 4: You've interviewed them, and you've gotten deep, gone deep into that,
Speaker 4: and even with Thurnose you're kind of a little bit
Speaker 4: empathetic there.
Speaker 3: How did you change?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 5: I just couldn't understand how it started.
Speaker 4: Okay, how have you changed after sitting with these people
Speaker 4: and hearing the stories? Because I read the book. It's
Speaker 4: one thing face to facing their families, having, you know,
Speaker 4: having them bring you muffins whatever, and knowing their personalities
Speaker 4: and that they're human.
Speaker 3: What do you what's your big takeaway?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 6: It was really the inspiration behind the book, and that
Speaker 6: was all perpetrators are not stealing for greed, and so
Speaker 6: I wanted people to understand. At Kayla Ravello, for example,
Speaker 6: she's a chapter in the book. She was trying to
Speaker 6: help her husband get a job, put him back on
Speaker 6: his feet. She was a successful, wealthy corporate attorney. She
Speaker 6: didn't steal for money, and so I wanted people to
Speaker 6: be able to see that because I saw it. I'm
Speaker 6: sitting in these interviews and I'm just like, oh my god,
Speaker 6: this could be my girlfriend, this could be my cousin
Speaker 6: who holds these types of roles in these companies that
Speaker 6: could be placed in the exact same situation. So I
Speaker 6: found myself empathizing in a way that surprised me.
Speaker 5: I see my students.
Speaker 6: My students are graduate students, so they work full time,
Speaker 6: so they're like real adults, and I saw them empathize.
Speaker 6: Depending on the category, Now, if it's an intentional perpetrator,
Speaker 6: they're just like, Okay, that person's just they knew they
Speaker 6: were taking, they knew they were on the take, and
Speaker 6: they're sort of don't care.
Speaker 5: But it's those other two categories. I mean, I've had.
Speaker 6: Students cry, I mean just tears flowing down their faces
Speaker 6: listening to these stories.
Speaker 5: And it was those moments that made me.
Speaker 6: Say, you know, I gotta figure out a way that
Speaker 6: people can see themselves in these situations and have a
Speaker 6: little bit more empathy, and perhaps that can make organizations
Speaker 6: set up different types of internal controls, set up different
Speaker 6: type of employee options when employees are experiencing personal stress,
Speaker 6: maybe something can help prevent these kinds of situations even
Speaker 6: presenting themselves in.
Speaker 5: The first place. So I've changed a lot.
Speaker 4: Definitely, do your fraud are like you can tell me
Speaker 4: fraudar Like you can meet a person and go, this
Speaker 4: guy's gonna get this person's capable.
Speaker 5: You know, some some schemes are just obvious.
Speaker 1: But you know.
Speaker 6: It's tough because people are charismatic and you sort of
Speaker 6: are attracted to that type of energy, Like you know,
Speaker 6: great speakers seems super nice, seems really interested in you
Speaker 6: and what you have to say.
Speaker 5: But they don't believe rules apply to them. You can,
Speaker 5: you can pick up on it, but it takes a while.
Speaker 6: So I don't know my fraud fraud dot could be
Speaker 6: depending on the scheme, could be pretty pretty spot on.
Speaker 5: Sometimes I don't always trust myself.
Speaker 1: But you work with companies to help them diminish or
Speaker 1: spot fraud correct.
Speaker 2: So what do you tell them to look for? What
Speaker 2: are they and does that relate to what the average
Speaker 2: person should be looking for?
Speaker 6: You know, I use a lot of the scenarios, and
Speaker 6: I use those. I use those scenarios as kickoff points.
Speaker 6: And when you start using a storytelling or a scenario
Speaker 6: based approach, people start talking and people start talking about, well,
Speaker 6: the policy didn't say this, so isn't it okay to
Speaker 6: do these things? And so things come out. People learn
Speaker 6: more about what the procedure says on paper versus how
Speaker 6: the procedure is actually executed in an organization. So there
Speaker 6: was one gentleman that in the book we did a
Speaker 6: session together. We used to go around the country and
Speaker 6: do these sessions. These I guess there are white color
Speaker 6: crime sessions with companies, and so Nathan Mueller is and
Speaker 6: then I can't remember what chapter he's in. He's probably
Speaker 6: in one of the whistleblower chapters. And anyhow, there was
Speaker 6: a policy in his organization which was, we don't share passwords.
Speaker 6: Now most of us know that it's not it's not
Speaker 6: the safest thing to do to share your password with
Speaker 6: someone else, but we do it. And so the mandate
Speaker 6: from the c suite was we never share passwords. That's
Speaker 6: not how we operate. We know it's a risk to
Speaker 6: do that. But in his group, what they decided to
Speaker 6: do was to share passwords. So if somebody was out vacation, sick,
Speaker 6: you could log in as that person, so you could
Speaker 6: keep getting your work done. You wouldn't have any delays,
Speaker 6: you could submit.
Speaker 5: All your reports on time.
Speaker 6: Well, because Nathan knew another colleague's password, it allowed him
Speaker 6: to go in and create checks under his name, approved
Speaker 6: checks under the pass under the colleague's password, and he
Speaker 6: netted eight and a half million dollars with doing that.
Speaker 5: So what's interesting about going in and doing these.
Speaker 6: Types of workshops is people are able to pull out
Speaker 6: the flaws and their systems. I used to do these
Speaker 6: hackathons with company groups, and a hackathon hack your own system,
Speaker 6: so you know you have to first create this is
Speaker 6: a safe space. We're just brainstorming. If you were going
Speaker 6: to embezzle money from your company, how.
Speaker 5: Would you do it? And you know, it takes a
Speaker 5: little bit for people to get warmed up. But then
Speaker 5: the schemes that they can come up with, oh my god,
Speaker 5: be part of that.
Speaker 6: But what their schemes are showing are all the internal
Speaker 6: weaknesses with inside that company. So then they can take
Speaker 6: this paper when we've written everything down, and they can
Speaker 6: instill new controls to close up some of those open holes.
Speaker 6: So it's fun, it's interesting, but people are very creative.
Speaker 3: We're gonna we're going to go, but before we do,
Speaker 3: I got to ask you.
Speaker 4: Are you tempted to follow up on Curmo and find
Speaker 4: out contactor and do follow up on me?
Speaker 5: I've tried to follow up with her. At some point
Speaker 5: she might come for me.
Speaker 1: So wh're the horses?
Speaker 3: Do you know where the horses end up? Is everything taken.
Speaker 5: From her and she has no horses anymore?
Speaker 3: But you did try and follow up. You did try.
Speaker 2: For sure, I got it, you know before. Actually I
Speaker 2: can't let you go yet because I got it. This
Speaker 2: is I swear, this is a real thing. Just before
Speaker 2: we started the interview with you, I got a message
Speaker 2: on my phone. Let me see if I can read it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: from Juliet, Illinois. Juliet, Illinois, and I'm gonna read it,
Speaker 2: but I'm not going to play it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read it. Hi there.
Speaker 2: This call is for valued customers of No need to
Speaker 2: remind that today is the last day to take advantage
Speaker 2: of our exclusive fifty perind of offer on your account.
Speaker 2: In order to avail this opportunity and save monthly bill,
Speaker 2: simply call us back at this number from eight to five.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I don't have a sucker and I get
Speaker 1: these all the time.
Speaker 2: I got halls at my home phone for months about
Speaker 2: the extended warranty on my car and that I get
Speaker 2: messages about how my Netflix account is going to be
Speaker 2: suspended or my Amazon and just click here to prevent it.
Speaker 1: Now, I know, I know. I don't click on anything.
Speaker 1: I don't return anything.
Speaker 5: I don't want you just to go in.
Speaker 1: I want to know.
Speaker 2: Really, what I want to know is how are people
Speaker 2: profiting from this? If I click, what would have happened?
Speaker 3: Do you know?
Speaker 6: Oh? Yeah, so if you clicked, there may be a
Speaker 6: way to access your computer maybe figure out a way
Speaker 6: to dial into your Maybe you've accessed your bank account.
Speaker 5: Never click, never clicked?
Speaker 6: Oh my god, there's you know you think about there's
Speaker 6: so much information about us online where someone could easily
Speaker 6: become you.
Speaker 5: So who knows?
Speaker 6: By you clicking and just knowing every website that you
Speaker 6: accessed over the past one throw, it could help build
Speaker 6: a profile.
Speaker 5: So when I call the bank, I could easily be you.
Speaker 6: I could have enough information to answer enough questions where
Speaker 6: I have, I can break through all those security questions
Speaker 6: that they ask, and boom, I can have access to
Speaker 6: your money.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to live in this world. I
Speaker 1: don't what this does to me.
Speaker 2: The net of this is it makes me not trust
Speaker 2: anybody or anything that's not good.
Speaker 1: Right, How do we know what you know?
Speaker 6: Until they've earned or you've earned they've earned your trust,
Speaker 6: you probably should.
Speaker 4: And that's why Jason, the only person I trust. Does
Speaker 4: a guy in Nigeria's sending me two million dollars, that's
Speaker 4: the only guy that I trust.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what, I happen to know that guy,
Speaker 1: and I should say he knows me as well.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine if you're an honest guy in Nigeria
Speaker 4: and you're actually reaching out to somebody.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you for coming on. The book is wonderful.
Speaker 4: The movie that comes on thing. I know that that
Speaker 4: that that's part of your identity. But what an amazing story.
Speaker 2: And I will also say if you if you would
Speaker 2: like to interact more with doctor Pope, it's Kelly Richmond
Speaker 2: Pope dot com and your your frog game. More games
Speaker 2: are up on that website as well.
Speaker 5: You just go to that website games.
Speaker 1: I am going there tonight, so google him. What do
Speaker 1: you have? Well, I've got to do it quick because
Speaker 1: Lauria's gonna kill me. Ponzi scheme? Where did that come from?
Speaker 3: Hold a second, Laurie killing you makes us a murder
Speaker 3: right now?
Speaker 1: Matter?
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter that way anyway?
Speaker 1: Is it not Carlo Ponzi? It's a different name, Charles Ponzi.
Speaker 1: Charles Ponzi.
Speaker 4: Carlo Ponti was Sophia Lawrence husband where he targeted, targeted.
Speaker 1: There's about not people that know who we're talking about.
Speaker 3: When we say, oh, come on, everybody knows what's Saphilla render?
Speaker 1: Yeah google it? She still oh here, we got still
Speaker 1: here we go? Yeah right, yeah, hit me? Okay, Charles
Speaker 1: pont Right.
Speaker 7: So, Charles Ponza was in the early nineteen hundreds doing
Speaker 7: this of what we would later define as a punty scheme.
Speaker 7: In that time period, he made over fifteen million dollars,
Speaker 7: but nice he ended up in jail with only seventy
Speaker 7: five dollars to his name.
Speaker 1: That's the end of it. Yeah, and the final one,
Speaker 1: con Man, where did that term come confidence? A confidence?
Speaker 2: Man? You you take someone into your You supposedly take
Speaker 2: someone into your confidence, or you get into their confidence,
Speaker 2: and that's how you was at ear confidence of me.
Speaker 8: It was not earal confidence, Jason, you're correct, but it
Speaker 8: was a specific guy. There was a guy in the
Speaker 8: eighteen forties named William Thompson, and he would walk around
Speaker 8: New York City and he would approach strangers on the
Speaker 8: street with the question, have you confidence in me to
Speaker 8: trust me with your watch until tomorrow? People who would
Speaker 8: give him the watch and those sorts of things said
Speaker 8: they had confidence that he would come back in twenty.
Speaker 1: Four hours and return the watch to them.
Speaker 7: He eventually was caught by somebody who recognized him on
Speaker 7: the street, one of his best victims.
Speaker 1: And he too went to jail. How can that even
Speaker 1: be a crime.
Speaker 2: He said, do you have confidence? They said, yes, I do.
Speaker 2: They gave him the watch. He went, you shouldn't have
Speaker 2: had confidence. That's not saying I didn't say give me
Speaker 2: your watch. I said, do you trust me?
Speaker 1: Give me your watch?
Speaker 3: Had less confidence?
Speaker 2: Right, But I mean, I don't even see how that's going.
Speaker 2: That's like the thing about the you know this story,
Speaker 2: this famous story. Guy pulls up at a restaurant in
Speaker 2: la gives the valet his car keys, goes in as
Speaker 2: a lovely dinner, comes out, can't find the valet. Goes
Speaker 2: to the manager of the restaurant and goes, where's your valet?
Speaker 1: They go, we don't have a valet.
Speaker 2: Guyana Jack with a simo the guys. So it comes
Speaker 2: back to me about cons and frauds. And the truth is,
Speaker 2: you know, she was asking, am I am I? You know,
Speaker 2: a deliberate conomy, an accidental economy, all right, just but
Speaker 2: in my business there's conning all the time. I remember
Speaker 2: I remember going to an audition for a Broadway show
Speaker 2: called The Rink, which was peripherally about a roller skating rink,
Speaker 2: and they said to me in the first audition, do
Speaker 2: you roller skate? I said, yes, of course, of course,
Speaker 2: I'm actually a pretty proficient skater, never been on them
Speaker 2: in my life. The skate the callback for the skating
Speaker 2: was going to be in two or three weeks. I went,
Speaker 2: I'll figure it out. And I can also tell you
Speaker 2: that headshots, actors headshots, well, there was a time before
Speaker 2: the self tape phenomena where you would call people into audition,
Speaker 2: which means you can only call a certain number because
Speaker 2: you know it's a number of hours in the day
Speaker 2: where you would you would do that preliminary casting off
Speaker 2: of their their their headshot photo. So if you need
Speaker 2: a very specific type, I need a sort of a
Speaker 2: royal regal looking man or woman in their fifties, and
Speaker 2: you look at these headshots and you go, that looks right,
Speaker 2: and then they come in and there's nothing like ons
Speaker 2: in that headshot, headshots from twenty years ago, or it
Speaker 2: was retouched.
Speaker 3: The point you.
Speaker 4: This, you're talking dating everybody I've ever met, and I'm
Speaker 4: not in the dating market, but did everybody on the
Speaker 4: dating market.
Speaker 3: But that's I don't know if that's fraud or if that's.
Speaker 1: Lit misrepresentation for a desired outcome. I mean, you defrauded me.
Speaker 2: When we did the AI episode and you you made
Speaker 2: me believe that Schwarzenegger was on the phone with me.
Speaker 1: I could hold you account ory, is that fraud?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: I said, you know what, that's cat. I'll tell you
Speaker 4: right now and then we'll end the interview. Here what
Speaker 4: and that's entertainment.
Speaker 1: Now, really really now, really, if you.
Speaker 3: Joined us, you thank you. If you're not, I'm not
Speaker 3: thanking because you're not hearing it.
Speaker 1: And if you want to continue to be in touch
Speaker 1: with us, please go to our website reallynoreally dot com.
Speaker 2: Or you can also tell us a really know really
Speaker 2: that you might have your own very self. If it's
Speaker 2: something that we use on the show, we will credit
Speaker 2: you and we will send.
Speaker 1: You something, a gatorade, a hat, we'll send something. We
Speaker 1: have new episodes every Tuesday. You can catch us on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, or you can catch us on the
Speaker 1: Apple app or wherever you get your podcasts. And if
Speaker 1: you are watching on YouTube, please remember to like and subscribe.
Speaker 1: We'll be here every Tuesday.
Speaker 2: Thank you David Glutenheim, thank you Laurie for me, thank you,
Speaker 2: Peter Tilden. I'm pointing at you the audience, and I'm
Speaker 2: saying Peter Tilden, but I really only.
Speaker 3: Value you and David.
Speaker 4: If Laurie kills you, we will do a memorial episode here.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it will Skyrock that really touches.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and one more thing.
Speaker 8: As of August twenty twenty three, Sophia Lorenz is alive
Speaker 8: and well
Speaker 1: Fo