You can’t hide from the IRS! Eliseo Roquiz, an anesthesiologist, pleads guilty to filing a false document with IRS… Perhaps he’ll meet Wesley Snipes in prison…?

Don’t mess with the IRS…it really isn’t worth it.  Wesley Snipes tried and look where it got him – 3 years in federal prison.  How’s that for putting a career on hold.

Eliseo Roquiz of Erie, Penn., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin of the Western District of Pennsylvania to charges of filing a false document with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Justice Department and IRS announced.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Dr. Roquiz, an anesthesiologist, used multiple tax fraud promoters to prevent the IRS from assessing and collecting his income taxes. In 1998, Dr. Roquiz established two sham trusts with the assistance of a California-based organization called National Trust Service and paid an affiliate of National Trust Service to prepare false individual and trust tax returns for him for the years 1998, 1999 and 2000. As part of the fraud, Dr. Roquiz had medical providers pay fees for his services to the sham trusts and then claimed false deductions on the trust returns to reduce the taxes on the income to zero.  Dr. Roquiz also opened bank accounts in the name of the sham trusts and transferred title to his personal residence to one of the trusts.

According to court documents and statements made in court, in 2003, after the IRS began to audit his tax returns, Dr. Roquiz hired American Rights Litigators/Guiding Light of God Ministries (ARL/GLGM), an organization located in Florida that sold abusive tax schemes, to send obstructive and frivolous correspondence to the IRS in response to notices that the IRS sent to Dr. Roquiz. After ARL/GLGM was permanently enjoined in February 2004, Dr. Roquiz hired a third fraud promoter, Joseph Saladino, to file frivolous amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Returns (IRS Forms 1040X) for the years 2000 and 2001

According to public documents and statements, Dr. Roquiz’s efforts to disrupt IRS collection activities culminated with the submission of three false Collection Information Statements for Wage Earners and Self-Employed Individuals (IRS Forms 433-A) between January and June 2005.  All three Forms 433-A, which Dr. Roquiz signed under penalties of perjury, were materially false in that Dr. Roquiz failed to disclose that he had transferred his personal residence to his sham trust and that he was a party to a lawsuit.  The second and third Forms 433-A, which Dr. Roquiz submitted in May and June of 2005, were also materially false in that Dr. Roquiz failed to disclose the existence of a bank account that he opened in the name on an LLC he had established in New Mexico.

As part of the plea agreement, the parties agreed that the tax loss associated with Dr. Roquiz’s conduct was $342,361.11 plus interest.

The charge against Dr. Roquiz carries a maximum sentence of up to three years in prison.  Sentencing is set for Nov. 15, 2011.

Perhaps Dr. Roquiz will meet Wesley…

YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!

Le-Nature’s fraud “the largest in the history of the Western District of Pennsylvania” – Robert B. Lynn found guilty of Bank Fraud!

Losses hidden by false documents leads to massive collapse and huge losses.  Every choice has a consequence and this scheme left many holding the bag with financial losses.

After deliberating 16 hours, a federal jury of nine women and three men found Robert B. Lynn guilty of 10 counts of bank fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy relating to the operations of Le-Nature’s, Inc., the Latrobe, Pennsylvania water bottler that collapsed in bankruptcy in 2006, United States Attorney David J. Hickton announced.

Lynn, 67, of Westmoreland County, Pa., was tried before Senior United States District Judge Alan N. Bloch in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“The Le-Nature’s fraud was the largest financial fraud in the history of the Western District of Pennsylvania,” said U.S. Attorney Hickton. “The public interest demands effective prosecution of all crimes, and this was one of special magnitude. At the end of this lengthy investigation and trial, we are gratified by the diligent work of the jury in reaching its verdict.”

According to Assistant United States Attorneys James Y. Garrett and Robert S. Cessar, who prosecuted the case, the evidence presented at trial established that the defendant ran Le-Nature’s sales operations.  While the company was losing millions on its products during the years 2001 to 2006, Lynn and other company executives provided false information about its business activity and financial condition to investors and lenders, making it seem the company was profitable and expanding.  As a result of the false information, lenders and investors advanced funding to Le-Nature’s of more than $800 million during the scheme.  When the company collapsed, the losses were approximately $600 million.

Five other defendants charged in the scheme pleaded guilty earlier.  They were Gregory J. Podlucky, 50, of Westmoreland County, Jonathan Podlucky, 37, of Westmoreland County, Andrew J. Murin, Jr., 54, of Washington County, Donald Pollinger, 67, of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Tammy Andreycak, 43, of Westmoreland County.

Judge Bloch scheduled sentencing for Dec. 1, 2011. Based on Lynn’s convictions, the law provides for a total sentence of 220 years in prison, a fine of $2.5 million, or both.  Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the actual sentence imposed is based on the seriousness of the offenses and the criminal history, if any, of the defendant.

Pending sentencing, the court allowed Lynn to remain free on bond.

The Internal Revenue Service/Criminal Investigation and the United States Postal Inspection Service conducted the investigation that led to the prosecution of Robert B. Lynn.

YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME

After dropping the ball on the Bernie Madoff scandall – the SEC changes its focus on Tips!

Sometimes government agencies just don’t get it…they miss the obvious and ignore competent data that’s provided through tips.  Perhaps they aren’t staffed to follow up.  Perhaps they feel that most tips are grudge tips and not credible.  Who knows?  But after the Madoff scandall – the largest Ponzi scheme in US history, the SEC has now changed their focus when it comes to tips.  Below is a well written article that shows the power of tips and it’s impact on busting fraud wide open.

(Sarah N. Lynch and Matthew Goldstein) – For more than three years, U.S. securities regulators investigated allegations of accounting fraud at a small telecom firm called China Voice Holding Corp, but could not make a case.

Then last November, they got an unexpected break. A Texas-based tax consultant doing work for a firm affiliated with China Voice contacted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission with information about suspicious money transfers she’d detected.

The call from Dee Dee Stone was quickly routed to a preliminary version of the SEC’s new $21 million “Tips, Complaints and Referrals” or TCR Database, which the agency later fully deployed in March. Within 24 hours, Stone, a former Internal Revenue Service agent, got a call from an SEC attorney spearheading the China Voice inquiry.

Five months later, the SEC on April 29 sued several China Voice executives, claiming they had duped investors out of $8.6 million in a Ponzi scheme. Agency lawyers say without Stone’s help, regulators may not have even discovered the scheme, let alone made a case so soon.

The alleged fraud at China Voice was small in the annals of Wall Street sins. But the SEC’s response to Stone is an indication that after dropping the ball on Bernie Madoff, the nation’s top securities cops are trying to modernize the way they handle tips and complaints about potential wrongdoing.

The TCR Database is the SEC’s most significant response to its well-documented fumbling of early tips about Madoff’s $65 billion fraud. The SEC’s new Office of Market Intelligence, which last summer also forged a first-of-its kind partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is using the database as a key tool.

The changes are part of an effort by SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro to overcome the agency’s reputation for being a step or two behind the bad guys. It is far too soon for the SEC to declare victory. But some of the agency’s harshest critics notice a change.

Among them is Harry Markopolos, the Boston-based financial analyst and fraud investigator best-known for trying to alert regulators about problems with Madoff’s operation. Markopolos said since the database went into operation, he has submitted three of his own tips. In all three cases, he heard back from an SEC attorney within days, or in one case, a few hours.

“Everything they should have done in the Madoff case they are now doing,” said Markopolos. “They have done a fantastic job of reforming themselves.”

In February 2009, Markopolos told the House Committee on Financial Services that the SEC’s “investigative ineptitude and financial illiteracy” permitted Madoff’s crimes to go on for so long.

PAPER, PENCILS & FAXES

It took the embarrassment of the Madoff scandal to drag the SEC into the 21st century when it comes to tracking tips and complaints.

Tips used to come via phone calls, e-mails, faxes and even handwritten letters into the SEC’s 11 regional offices and Washington headquarters. Before the Madoff case, the SEC’s Los Angeles office might receive a written complaint about a bad broker, for instance, and stuff the letter into a filing cabinet if it was deemed without merit. So, if later on a complaint about the same broker was sent to the SEC’s Chicago office, staff there would have no easy way of knowing about the earlier tip and connecting the dots.

Sometimes, the only way an attorney could find out if someone had looked into a complaint would be to call all the other SEC offices.

“It was a sieve, basically,” says Russ Ryan, a partner in the Washington law office of King & Spalding who spent a decade at the SEC before leaving in 2004. “It probably got better as I went along in my career, but I remember back when I first started there, it was a lot of paper and pencil type stuff.”

Now with the TCR Database, once a tip or complaint is entered into the system, about 2,300 SEC employees can see it and add new information.

“All of the plumbing was brought into one place,” said Thomas Sporkin, a nearly 19-year veteran SEC attorney in Washington, who oversees the agency’s new Market Intelligence Unit and its 41-member team.

The database is emerging alongside a new program by the FBI’s criminal profiling group in Quantico, Va. that is creating a series of behavioral composites to help agents investigate white collar crime.

The more systematic approach by the SEC and FBI comes in response to the growth and complexity of financial crimes in recent years. In the US government’s 2010 fiscal year, the FBI’s economics crime unit reports the bureau had 1,703 active securities and commodities fraud investigations, a 41 percent increase over the number of active investigations in 2008.

Over the past year, the amount of monetary penalties the SEC has imposed on wrongdoers has almost tripled, with high-profile cases against companies such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Keegan for their roles in the crisis.

Sporkin’s 41-member Market Intelligence Unit last month moved into new offices in Washington that look a little bit like a Wall Street trading floor, where they process more than 100 tips, complaints and referrals that come in each day.

The group’s chief task is to ensure legitimate tips, like the one from Stone about China Voice, get routed to the right attorneys. The triage process begins with analyzing the information provided by tipsters, whistleblowers and self-regulatory organizations on an online questionnaire in the TCR Database portal.(here)

The SEC is also trying to revamp the way it uses the raw data it gathers. Sporkin’s team is working side-by-side with an FBI expert in financial crimes under a deal agreed to last August.

The FBI agent gets to look at all the tips about securities fraud as they come into Sporkin’s team. For the FBI, the partnership offers the promise of faster criminal investigations. For the SEC, it’s a chance to learn a trick or two from law enforcement.

Having an FBI agent embedded with the SEC “is really revolutionary,” Sporkin said.

Other regulators are trying to set up their own FBI partnerships, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates the futures and over-the-counter derivatives market. The CFTC, which declined to comment, has also been closely studying the operation of Sporkin’s team.

THE FBI EMBED

Jeffrey Horner, the FBI agent embedded with Sporkin’s group, is an accountant who worked for audit giant PriceWaterhouseCoopers before joining the bureau in 2004.

Horner says he’s not allowed to talk about specifics, but the nearly year-long partnership has led to new leads and bolstered existing FBI files.

“Some of the raw data that comes into the SEC, the (FBI) case agents may not be aware of,” he said. “So plugging them in with the SEC and the information that the SEC has can be very valuable to an ongoing investigation.”

FBI agent Horner is also sitting in on two SEC working groups examining micro-cap fraud and Chinese businesses that have done so-called reverse mergers with small U.S. shell companies. The FBI has opened its own broad investigation into reverse mergers and allegations of accounting irregularities.

Horner also uses the SEC’s tips system to drill into areas of particular interest to the FBI. Right now, for instance, he is on the lookout for tips about high-yield investment scams as well as high-priority areas such as insider-trading and market manipulation.

The real test of the partnership — and the effectiveness of the TCR Database — will lie in the kind of cases the SEC and federal prosecutors file.

An independent analysis of the work of Sporkin’s team could come when SEC Inspector General David Kotz conducts a planned audit of the Market Intelligence Unit’s triage work. Kotz, who issued a scathing report on the SEC’s failures in the Madoff affair, has called the new database an adequate response to ensure tips are “acted upon in a timely and appropriate manner.”

Former SEC lawyers and securities attorneys wonder whether more agents need to be assigned to the SEC-FBI partnership.

“My sense is that there would be so many things going across that person’s desk, I am not sure one person can manage it,” said James Cox, a law professor at the Duke University School of Law.

Officials with the SEC and the FBI don’t rule out an enhanced relationship. They note that before Horner was embedded with the SEC, the two agencies coordinated on major investigations, such as the probe into insider trading by hedge funds.

At the same time, officials say they are sensitive to law enforcement protocols prohibiting prosecutors and the FBI from sharing investigative materials, such as wiretapped conversations, with securities regulators. They say it’s easier for the FBI and SEC to work hand-in-hand before an investigation gets going to avoid any defense allegations of improper collaboration or information-sharing.

REWARDING WHISTLEBLOWERS

Sporkin’s group is a work in progress and the TCR Database has some limits. It can’t yet be cross-checked against other internal databases. The system s not advanced enough to perform more sophisticated analysis or data-mining, such as cross-checks against trading activity, company filings or news feeds.

“It will be several years before we really see whether this new system is a success,” said Bradley J. Bondi, a former SEC attorney who is now a partner with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP. “But I think the new system is a step in the right direction.”

It’s a system Sporkin expects will become bigger and better over time, especially now that the SEC in May finalized rules for its own whistleblower program, rewarding individuals who provide the agency with a high-quality tip that leads to a successful enforcement action.

Stone’s tip about the potential Ponzi scheme at China Voice came in November 2010, after she says she grew concerned about the number of complaints she was hearing from investors in China Voice and related partnerships.

On May 31, Stone, testifying before a U.S. judge in Dallas in the China Voice case, said she learned about the new whistleblower rule only after hiring an attorney in advance of her court appearance. Her attorney, Misty Gutierrez, declined to comment; Stone didn’t return telephone calls to her consulting business, Number Crunchers.

Stone told U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor she started reviewing the bank statements for China Voice and those related companies after hearing the complaints, and quickly concluded, “something was wrong.”

She talked about the money transfers with a friend who also once worked for the IRS and agreed the math didn’t add up. The next day, Stone said she called the SEC.

(Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters.

QUESTION: Do you think that you have information that would help law enforcement in discovering or uncovering fraud?  If so, would you be willing to share that in the form of a tip?  Not asking you to do that here on this blog, but rather discuss why you would or why you wouldn’t.

YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!

Social Security fraud is nothing to play with…just ask Samuel J. Delsignore!

A resident of New Salem, Pa., has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh on charges of Social Security fraud and false statements.

The two-count indictment, returned on July 19, named Samuel J. Delsignore, 50, as the sole defendant.

According to the indictment, on Aug. 14, 2009, during a Social Security Administration redetermination of benefits eligibility, Delsignore concealed assets consisting of an interest in his father’s estate, bank accounts, two tri-axle trucks and a classic car.  It is also alleged that, during an Oct. 14, 2010, interview with a Special Agent, Delsignore falsely represented the $21,000 sales price of his 1967 Pontiac GTO as being $1,500.

The law provides for a maximum total sentence (at each count) of five years in prison, a fine of $250,000, three years of supervised release and a $100 special assessment.  Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the actual sentence imposed would be based upon the seriousness of the offenses and the prior criminal history, if any, of the defendant.

YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!

Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado Present Symposium on Business Ethics Aug. 11-12

News Release re: Ethics Education

FORT COLLINS – Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado will present the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Leadership Symposium on Business Ethics Aug. 11-12.

In a business era punctuated by new and serious ethical challenges, this two-day interactive symposium is geared toward providing relevant tools and practice for navigating ethical dilemmas that professionals may encounter. All sessions will take place at the Bohemian Auditorium inside Rockwell Hall West on the CSU campus.

A variety of noteworthy speakers and presenters have been selected to lead the symposium in the following areas:

• Corporate Governance and Business Ethics Case Study – Led by Eric M. Pillmore, senior advisor for corporate compliance, Deloitte Center for Corporate Compliance and the former vice president of corporate compliance, Tyco International, this interactive session will engage participants in a case study of Tyco International and offer recommendations on how to restore an ethical culture to a company.

• Social Responsibility and Business Ethics – Bryan Simpson, media relations director for New Belgium Brewing Co., will lead a discussion of the company’s efforts toward maintaining sustainability and social responsibility in their business operations. Thomas Dean, professor of entrepreneurship and sustainable enterprise and the Daniels Ethics Professor at Colorado State University, will facilitate an interactive exercise where participants will balance profit maximization and sustainable business choices.

• Applying Ethical Decision Making at Work – Using business-based ethical dilemmas, Linda Ferrell and O.C. Ferrell, both professors of marketing and Bill Daniels Professors of Ethics at the University of New Mexico, will guide participants toward making workable recommendations based on unique organizational roles and perspectives. The two also will provide a framework for definitions, examples and overall understanding of organizational ethical decision making.

• Ethical Decision Making Simulation – Barney Rosenberg, a veteran of three decades of leadership in business ethics and corporate compliance, will lead this session that asks participants to use the knowledge gained in the symposium as a mock board of directors is forced to navigate a complex business environment in the corporate fast lane. Rosenberg, vice president of ethics and business conduct for The Meggitt Group, is a former general counsel for Mattel Corporation and a former deputy general counsel for Pitney Bowes.

This Leadership Symposium on Business Ethics is made possible through the support and leadership of the Daniels Fund, reflecting the interest in ethical business practices of Bill Daniels, its namesake. The Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative sponsors business ethics studies and research at seven U.S. universities, including Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado.

Individual cost to attend the symposium is $450, which includes breakfast, luncheon and evening networking event meals. To register for the conference or to learn more, visit http://transition.biz.colostate.edu/RSVP/2011LeadershipSymposium.aspx

Ethics and Honest Services: Promoting your book is one thing – fraud is quite another (or was it fraud?) … just ask Michael Jimenez and Marie Mason

The former fiscal manager for the Hillsborough County Head Start program goes on trial in federal court along with his wife and another Head Start employee on fraud charges.

Michael Jimenez is charged with conspiring with fellow Head Start employee Marie Mason to have the pre-school program buy $9,000 worth of books authored by Jimenez’ wife, Johana Melendez Santiago.

U.S Attorney Robert O’Neill is handling the government’s case personally. O’Neill is also the lead prosecutor in the government’s public corruption case against former Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin White.

Jimenez, Melendez and Mason each face three felony counts related to the book sale including obtaining “by fraud” more than $5,000 from a government agency, and obtaining money by “false and fraudulent pretenses” that deprived citizens and Head Start clients of their right to “honest services.”Defense attorneys say their clients did not intend to defraud the government. The purchase of 750 copies of “Travel Boy Helps Sebastian,” a book that teaches children about germs, was not done covertly, and the county got good value for the money spent. The 47-page book retails on Amazon.com for about $25 and is available in English and Spanish.

“The county bought the books …. That’s not fraudulent,” said Jeffrey Brown, Melendez’ lawyer. “The county paid for the books and the county got the books.”

Details in the federal indictment closely mirror evidence unearthed by a Hillsborough County investigator last year. Emails showed Melendez contacted her husband on April 15, 2010, concerning a “book order.”

“Here’s a letter of presentation of my book in case they need justification,” Melendez wrote, adding, “I’ll have the quote sent immediately.” She followed up with an email to a Head Start procurement employee.

Six days later, Jimenez forwarded the presentation to the procurement employee.

Mason, the agency’s family and mental health director, initiated an internal purchase request form for the book on May 3 of that year.

Originally, the agency was going to purchase 2,000 copies of the book. But several employees told the county investigator they were pressured to reduce the order to 750 copies so it wouldn’t be reviewed by the county’s procurement office.

“It was further part of the conspiracy that the conspirators would and did keep the total price of the purchase of the books under $10,000 so that the process of purchasing the books would not have to go through the bid process,” the indictment stated.

O’Neill won a tactical victory Thursday when Bucklew denied a defense motion to exclude evidence that Jimenez and Mason had not disclosed a conflict of interest in approving the purchase of the book. Defense attorneys cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year in Skilling v. United States that a fraud conviction cannot be based on conflicts of financial interest.

“Skilling says you can’t prove honest services fraud by anything other than bribery or a kickback,” said David Weisbrod, attorney for Jimenez.

The judge, however, agreed with O’Neill that the high court ruling did not say conflict of interest evidence could not be admitted, only that it could not be the basis of a conviction for honest services fraud.

However, the defense is expected to hammer at the points they say were raised in Skilling: No bribery or kickbacks took place, therefore there was no fraud.

O’Neill disagreed, saying in the hearing that the Supreme Court has defined “kickback” as any money, gratuity or gift provided directly to people for services or obtaining services.

Head Start, a school readiness program under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is funded with federal and county dollars. When officials in the county’s Family & Aging Services Department learned of the book deal, they passed the information to County Administrator Mike Merrill, who ordered an internal investigation.

Based on the probe’s findings, Merrill tried to fire Jimenez in December. But federal rules require such a termination be approved by the executive committee of the Head Start Policy Council, a group consisting mostly of parents of children in the program.

When the group refused to fire Jimenez, Merrill took the next step under Head Start guidelines by referring the firing to a three-person committee made up of two county officials and the chairman of the policy council. They agreed in March that Jimenez should be fired.

Merrill also had recommended that Mason be fired, but the Head Start committee refused. After negotiations between Mason’s lawyer and the county, she was allowed to come back to work. Mason is now on administrative leave without pay pending the outcome of the trial.

An excellent article about this issue is found here.

THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS WELCOME!

Business Ethics: It is really about more than avoiding prison! Is there a little Bernie Madoff in each of US? A Guest Blog by Corey Richardson

A “Man of The Age” financier is surrounded by mystery and adoring members of the moneyed elite hungry for some of his wondrous returns. This paragon of the business class with The Midas Touch accepts only a few choice clients who seem to wither in his presence as they deliver their accumulated wealth into his magical hands – no questions asked. The returns are beyond belief, and for very good reasons. Unbeknownst to all, this wizard of the market is juggling fraudulent accounts to pay for his lavish lifestyle. The only trading is from their hands to his. The ruse comes tumbling down and the entire nation is stunned.

The scoundrel portrayed above is Charles Dickens’ character, Mr. Merdle of Little Dorrit, first published in 1857. Dickens foretold the Madoff scandal verbatim in his quintessential corruption tale, but this iniquitous business leader is an age-old archetype, and we, like Dickens, find it easy to vilify him due to the magnitude of his crimes; No stealing a crust of bread for this villain. At its polar opposite, take the “common criminal,” the savage monster seen today in T.V. cop shows, the local news, and innumerable B-movies. This standard is bloodthirsty, drug- crazed, and has a soul as black as night.

Dickens’ work is also replete with such characters.  The beauty of these caricatures is that we cannot find ourselves in either. They conveniently represent “other.” All the while we can sit comfortably in our living rooms with our sense of moral rage because we do not bilk venerable charitable funds and we do not cook meth in our kitchen. Yet, it can be argued that if we truly strive for a better world, then we need to go well beyond the knee-jerk reactions of these scenarios, and find ourselves in the moral conundrums.

Stricter regulations of the financial sector and more accountability, gun control legislation, sensible criminal sentencing laws, affordable drug rehab, etc., are important factors, but are only part of the solution. Even focusing on improvements to education and social services, which have been shown to be extremely important in crime prevention within certain groups, is still only a small part. To thoroughly understand what drives people as different as Kenneth Lay or a Gov. “Blago,” as well as a gun-totting inner-city kid with a pocket full of dope, we must understand root causes of criminal behavior, thus pointing the way for our next generation of leaders- and evaluate ourselves in our own business affairs.

“What causes criminal activity, and. who are these people who commit crimes against our society, such as … ” taking items from work, “fudging” on taxes, paying for non-business activity with a business account, inflating an insurance claim, switching labels at a store, producing unsafe products, “padding” a bill, or any number of violations of legislated standards for personal gain committed by everyday people.

Due to perception, universally known within psychology as the fundamental attribution error, these crimes are given little thought by those who commit them.   Joe Citizen justifies and minimizes these activities as “bending” the rules. And this is where we see the attribution error in effect: we tend to overestimate the role of personal factors and underestimate the “influence of situations in others, and we overestimate the situational factor and underestimate the personal factor in our own circumstances. It is the age-old “We judge others on their actions, and we judge ourselves on our intent.” Or I’m bending the rules, and he is breaking the law.

This phenomenon is not unique to the middle and upper socioeconomic strata, and equally applies to the poor. A drug dealer feels that his activities, though illegal, are still a legitimate means to earn a livable wage within his community.  The same could be said of any accountant or lawyer who “tweak’s” the system to make a little money. So, getting a television set off the back of a truck in the ghetto looks much like another’s decision to not claim income on a second job. It is all about perspective.

As we address the problem of the business class, we can facilitate the much-needed change in perspective with some cold, hard facts. Business leaders do not need to be as extraordinarily crooked as Madoff to affect a, huge societal burden. Study after-study demonstrates that “white collar” or corporate crimes, as well as middle-class crimes, ranging from tax evasion, insurance fraud, price fixing, inventory “shrinkage” (what a euphemism!), etc., weigh much more heavily than the number one Index crime, conventional property crime. Index crimes are known also as “street crimes.” They are highly visible crimes, easy to categorize and count, and are overwhelmingly committed by the poor. White collar crimes, by contrast, are difficult to detect and rarely prosecuted. Still, the economic yearly cost with respect to property crimes of the corporate America are approximately twenty times greater than conventional property crimes of index offenses, or a difference of $200 billion to $10 billion annually.

Having completed a fully accredited MBA program via a distance-based education format, I need to share that – this accomplishment – was done from an 8′ by II’ prison cell.  I was an inmate and like most “on the inside,” I readily justified my criminal acts, which occurred within my professional life, as did the drug dealer or the burglar.  So, as I approached my Business Ethics coursework, I did it with the secure knowledge that I committed a crime. This perspective, and the belief that my professors would judge my answers too with this in mind, gave me a keen eye in studying ethical queries in business.

I believe that when most students answer questions related to ethical foundations or detail their understanding of their own personal values, they do it from a perspective that they themselves could not possibly commit a crime. Such activities, such as smoking pot in the college dorm or not claiming wages from a summer job paid “under the table,” are simply not considered as crimes, which they are. Again the attribution error: “My (illegal) acts are not illegal, and certainly not unethical.

Everybody does it. It is no big deal.” And so forth. To cultivate a true ethical North in business, we must broaden our perspectives, and when an ethical dilemma arises, we can perceive it as such. No different from operations management or strategic planning. An appreciation of multiple perspectives — proffers a grand wealth of insight that will carry our next generation of leaders.

As a convict, my daily life is a direct result of criminal acts related to my work. In my studies, I can clearly see the untold millions that are affected by one unsafe product, but I can also appreciate how one man can justify criminal acts as a bad business decision, rather than a pathological act for profit with no respect for the law. To open the eyes of CEOs early in their training to the easy comparisons between corporate crime and “street” crimes, as well as offer tangible proof of the enormous societal burden of white-collar crime, would be of immeasurable value. In teaching business ethics, we must go well beyond the bland terms and definitions and the prosaic personal litanies of “What I value in the world.” We must make the coursework truly applicable and create managers and business leaders who intuitively understand how ethics within Corporate America are just as important, if not more so, as profit margins and supply chains.

Clearly, when I understand myself, I can understand Bernie Madoff or Kenneth Lay.  I believe the same could be said of us all. The equation is simple: Unbridled Financial Gain plus Opportunity, then Add the Likelihood of Detection and Fear of Prosecution. Embracing the truth of unlawful acts in our everyday lives, be it business or personal, is much harder to do than to merely vilify in a fanciful Dickensian way the corporate or government leader who betrays our trust, or even the dope dealer of the inner cities. But it will help to create leaders who view all of their work and life through a lens of principled behavior. We must begin to see the situational nature of all criminals acts, and therein lies the beginning of meaningful solutions. It is not enough to alter the number of opportunities to steal or the severity of the requisite penalties, but to go further by changing what stealing looks like by different people, changing the perceptions of illegal gains, and infusing the intrinsic value of ethical behavior.

When we see that all of us have a little of Bernie Madoff in us, only then can we begin to view our world more clearly and begin to make authentically ethical decisions as we lead our companies and organizations. We may even make significant changes in our personal lives.

Business Ethics: It is really is about more than avoiding prison.

Corey Richardson Biography:

Corey John Richardson is a former clinician, who holds a Master’s Degree in PA Studies from the University of Nebraska’s College of Medicine (Omaha) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Health Science/PA Certificate from the University of Florida’s College of Health Related Professions (Gainesville). He holds an MBA from Salve Regina University’s Graduate Business School (Newport, RI) and has completed doctoral health science coursework with a focus on prison healthcare at Spalding University (Louisville, KY). Mr. Richardson’s work has been incorporated into criminology courses at the University of Cincinnati and has been included in CURE’s congressional file on correctional healthcare in support of HR 3710. He has performed medico-legal consulting and has legal experience assisting prisoners in various civil and criminal actions. As a pro se litigant, he won a precedent-setting case on appeal against the Kentucky DOC and its Abuse of Power (published at Richardson v. Rees, 283 S.W. 3d, 257). He has also worked as a facilitator in numerous psychotherapeutic and rehabilitative programs.

Mr. Richardson has written widely about prison issues and sobriety for publications such as Spotlight on Recovery, Cell Door Magazine (the official publication of the National Death Row Assistance Network), T’he Kentuckiana News, Perspectives (the official journal of the Association for Humanistic Psychology), The Grapevine (Alcoholics Anonymous’ international publication), The Long Term View: A journal of informed opinion (Massachusetts School of Law at Andover), OUTlooks (Canada’s GLBT magazine), and others. Several of his essays have been published in the book Voices Through The Wall and he won 1st Prize in the Ford Foundation’s 2OO9 national writing competition Think Outside the Cell, published in Love lives here, too. (2010)

Mr. Richardson maintains his writing at coreyrichardson.blogspot.com and may be reached at coreyjohnrichardson@gmail.com. In 2001, he was convicted of crimes related to practicing medicine without a license and served 122 months in the Kentucky Department of Corrections; his supervising physician was given a probated sentence. Mr. Richardson has 13 years of continuous sobriety on July 14, 2011.

Bribery – a way of doing business! Now, Justin W. Lee, former President of Lee Dynamics International faces Prison for Bribery! Comments by business ethics speaker and author Chuck Gallagher

The former president of Lee Dynamics International, a defense contractor providing services to the U.S. military in Iraq, pleaded guilty today to an indictment charging him with a scheme to bribe military officials in order to obtain government contracts, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division.

Justin W. Lee, 33, a resident of Philadelphia, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Joel H. Slomsky in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and four counts of bribery.  Lee and his father, George H. Lee Jr., were charged in an indictment unsealed on May 27, 2011, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Justin Lee admitted that he conspired with his father and others to bribe military contracting officers in order to obtain government contracts to support U.S. combat operations in Iraq.  According to court documents, Justin Lee provided things of value, including cash, airline tickets, meals, hotel stays, spa visits and jobs, which were valued at a total of more than $1.2 million, to public officials in return for official acts which helped him obtain lucrative Department of Defense contracts.  The contracts included multi-million dollar contracts for the storage of weapons at various warehouses in Iraq as well as bottled water.

“For Justin Lee and others, bribery was a way of doing business,” said Assistant Attorney General Breuer.  “He offered military officials vacations to Thailand and Europe, Rolex watches, cash, and even employment with their company, all in order to secure lucrative defense contracts.  Private contractors will not be allowed to win business by stacking the deck against the competition and, as this investigation shows, the military officials who participate in such fraudulent schemes will also be held to account.”

“Justin Lee’s guilty plea is a prime example of the teamwork amongst Special Agents of the Major Procurement Fraud Unit (MPFU), US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID), our law enforcement partner agencies, and with the DOJ attorneys that comprised the former Kuwait Fraud Task Force,” said James K. Podolak, director of Army CID’s MPFU. “Charged with protecting the Army’s interests with respect to contract fraud and corruption, in a global environment, the MPFU stands ready with Special Agents strategically assigned throughout the U.S. and abroad to bring these criminals to justice.”

“This plea illustrates that it does not matter where they reside, work, or travel, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service will not stop pursuing those individuals who steal funds from the Department of Defense and U.S. Taxpayers” said Robert Craig, Special Agent in Charge for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Mid-Atlantic Field Office.

“I am pleased that Justin Lee pleaded guilty to the bribery charges filed against him for the abusive and illegal contracting schemes he engineered as a private contractor in Iraq,” said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. “I commend my SIGIR agents and our partners for persevering in this complex case, which is part of perhaps the largest fraud conspiracy yet uncovered in the reconstruction program.”

Four of the military contracting officials with whom Justin Lee conspired have pleaded guilty: John Cockerham Jr., Markus McClain, Kevin A. Davis and Levonda Selph.

Justin Lee faces up to 15 years in prison for each count of bribery, as well as a fine of $250,000 or three times the value of the bribe for each count.  He also faces up to five years in prison for the conspiracy count as well as a fine of $250,000.

George Lee, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Lee Dynamics International, remains at large. An indictment is merely a charge and a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

 

Former Alabama Mayor – John Jackson – sentenced to prison for filing false Tax Returns!

John Jackson, the former mayor of White Hall, Ala., was sentenced to two years in prison, the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced.  According to court documents, Jackson filed false joint 2004, 2005 and 2006 U.S. Individual Income Tax Returns (IRS Forms 1040) that did not report all of the total income earned by Jackson and his spouse.  Jackson did not report as income money he took from the city of White Hall and money he diverted from non-profit companies who handled the gaming license for White Hall.

Jackson was also sentenced to one year of supervised release, and ordered to pay a $25,000 fine and restitution in the amount of $11,065.

Christopher Blackwell – indicted on Investment Fraud in Colleyville, Texas. Simple fraud will earn a painful consequence!

A classic stupid Ponzi scheme!  It has been said that a sucker is born every day, but I still find myself amazed that otherwise intelligent people would fall for something so blatantly stupid as what Blackwell offered to the fine folks in and around Colleyville, Texas.  As a business ethics and fraud prevention speaker and author, I know first hand about what goes on behind the scenes when such a fraud occurs and how folks fall prey to victimization by perpetrators like Blackwell.

Christopher Blackwell, 32, of Colleyville, Texas, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of wire fraud in relation to an investment fraud scheme he has operated since January 2007. Blackwell was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona, earlier this month. Blackwell remains in custody. A date has not yet been set for his arraignment in U.S. District Court in Fort Worth.

According to the indictment, Blackwell allegedly deceived investors by falsely telling them that he would invest their money in business ventures that would generate a high rate of return, and by fraudulently assuring them that the investments would involve little to no risk. He told investors that their money would be invested in specific business ventures, but when he received investors’ money, he didn’t invest it and instead used most of it for his own personal benefit. On occasion, he would use some of the funds from new investors to make small payments to earlier investors to convince them that their money was generating a profit. However, not all investors received payments from Blackwell and many lost all of the money they invested.

According to the criminal complaint filed in the case, more than 20 victims, suffering more than $4 million in losses as a result of Blackwell’s scheme, have been identified. One investor, identified only by initials, lost all of the $325,000 he gave Blackwell to invest. In fact, after this investor wired the money as directed to Blackwell’s accounts, agents obtained Blackwell’s bank records and were able to determine that Blackwell didn’t invest the money as promised, but instead used it for personal expenditures including automatic teller machine withdrawals, dining and entertainment, luxury vehicle expenses and payments to family and business associates.

In February 2011, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a complaint against Christopher Love Blackwell, AV Bar Reg, Inc. and Millers A Game, LLC, two entities he controls, claiming that Blackwell enticed investors by telling them that his trading program would generate highly impressive, guaranteed returns of 25 to 30 percent per month with regularity. He falsely claimed these profits were possible because of his academic pedigree, including Master’s and Ph.D. degrees acquired at a prestigious university in Spain (Blackwell holds no such degrees); his extensive experience as a trader (he has little, if any, such experience); and the know-how and connections he acquired while employed by Goldman Sachs and The Bank of Madrid (he never worked at either firm). In March 2011, the SEC and Blackwell and his entities entered into an agreed judgment.

25 to 30 percent per month with regularity?  Really, in this economy people would believe that?  Whatever happened to due diligence?

An indictment is an accusation by a federal grand jury, and a defendant is entitled to the presumption of innocence unless proven guilty. If convicted, however, each of the wire fraud counts carries a maximum statutory sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Restitution could be ordered.

If you were a victim of this Ponzi Scheme…perhaps you’d comment on the lure Blackwell used to secure your investment.

YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!