White collar crime. Check out website to learn more to work forward a moe just, equitable and Inclusive Society for all. I want to thank everyone who has worked hard to put together this incredible event for you, including our wonderful speaker, dean julia and a terrific book store partner, Marketing Team and all of you for your support. I also want to let you know that todays program will be reaired on cspan booktv following this event. At the opened todays program please stay tuned for Upcoming Events and information pow you can obtainer own company of professor taubs book. We hope you el ask lots of questions today and well take those at the very end of the program. To do so simply speaker enter your questions in he q a box. Ill tune things over now. Thank you to the center for social justice, for organizing and hosting this event and for inviting me to speak briefly as ash yell, im the dean of the University School of law and im delighted to welcome everyone to tonights event. Though host bid the center for social justice and i also have the pleasure of introducing my colleagues Jennifer Taub. So, jennifer is the newest member of our western new England School of law faculty having just join us last month and i think i speak for my colleagues in saying our delighted to count her as a member of our community and tonight with get to celebrate the release of her new book big dirty money released yesterday by viking. I have my copy here and i know ariel is giving everybody directions how to order that. Professor taub is an authority on the 2008 mortgage meltdown and he latest financial crisis and i think its fair to say that her thoughtful, careful, but very Accessible Research and writing focuses on important issues having to do White Collar Crime and the deepseated and structural problem that leave certain offenders to being let off the look and other people being treated incredibly harshly by our regularlier to and criminal Justice System. Beyond that professor taub offers common sense recommendations for reforms that promote fairness and in the Justice System that would enhance transparency and provide powerful means to improve anticorruption initiatives and although professor taub could not have predicted that the timing of the books approximation would coincide with new revelations about the tax returns and tax avoidance strategy of President Trump, her research, observations and recommendations resonate with what we read in the news and could not be more timely. Professor taub will be in conversation today with helen oland, a Washington Post opinions columnist and author of several books on personal finance, including how foolish exposing the dark side of the finance industry. She is a senior managing ed for public seminars, speaks widely on political and Economic Issues and serves on the Advisory Board of the Economic Hardship reporting project. Before our speakers begin id like to read one little snippet of praise for professor taubs book and a testament to her it was hard to narrow it down to one. Wore has been appropriately glowingly reviewed in publications. The yates is drowning in dirty month we constructs a two tiered system of justice on, corruption and Campaign Finance, of bailoutses and bankruptcies. Jennifer taub strips barrel the racism and regularlier to failure that have made americas wealthiest pred temperatures too big to fail and too spectacular jail. Anyone worried about hoe these failures shape politics, elects, journalism and justice should take notice. And tonight were taking notice and with that i will turn it over to Jennifer Taub and helen hollande. Thank you bowling so much. Thank you so much, and thank you ariel and everyone at the wne for such a warm welcome. I came to i joined the faculty we win in the midst of the covid pandemic, and dean promised we would quote and have coffee together she didnt want me to feel like i wasnt welcome but this is a good substitute so thank you for joining me today. I im go to beginning by reading a few passages from the presses and that will take maybe three minutes at most, and then ill hand things over to helen oland, who i know that she has some tough questions for me. She one of the three people she admires is a member of congress, casey katy port sore im a little scared. So ill begin with a preface the title is crime scene. Big cheaters, often prosper and they do it right in front of our faces. You can see them almost daily on the front page of the paper, in your twitter feed and on broadcast in cable news programs. Rouge to riches stories are common. Cheating the public get away with it is the new normal. Turn on the television today and you are more likely to see wealthy wellconnected white men to ensure president ial pardons that watch one get sent to prison. Just after valentines day in 2020. President trump grant clemency to a slew of affluent felons. Their offenses . Bribery, investment fraud, tax evasion, medicare fraud, public corruption, computer hacking, and exextortion coverups, money lawnerring, conspiracy to defraud the federal government, obstruction of justice, mail fraud, wire fraud. No White Collar Crime left behind. The official white house announcement used the words successful four times to describe these elite outlaws but made no mention of the order people they victimized. Everywhere you look, predators are profiting off targets and then striding away with their catch. They melee low may lie lowway fog the outcry to good and then go out hunting generally. Its how they survive and thrive. The rest of us are victims. Directly or indirectly. Even if we have never invest net their companies, or bought their shoddy products. We associate he word victim with crimes of violence and theft. But corrupt and sometimes criminal acts by trusted business and government leaders can hurt us far more recently and extensive live than street crime. White collar crime in america such as fraud and embezzlement cost victims 300 billion to 800 pin for year, yet street level property crimes, including burglary, larceny and theft, cost us far lest, 16 billion newly according to the fbi. We also have a double standard in the american criminal Justice System that reflects and per pest waits inequality. Perpetuates inequality. Cutting legal corpers is a tool for advancement only available to the already affluent. The wealthy not only increase their power by evading punish. But also benefit from a criminal Justice System that incarcerates those with lower social status. Selling loose signature recent new york city sidewalk can lead to a chokehold arrest and death. Eric garner, middle ages black man was surround by Police Officers, tackled and suffocated for what was just a smalltime tax dodge. Garner wag setting cigarettes purchased cheaper by the pack out of state and selling them one by one to passers by. Tax evasion. Depriving you state and city of nearly 5. 85 per pack. The department of justice decided note to prosecute the professor who killed garner. The reasoning . The powers that be believed he had not used Excessive Force under the circumstances. Racism is baked into that conclusion. Can you imagine cops circle, tackling and choking a white woman who is poised to drop her fraudulent tax return in a mail box . How would that not be considered Excessive Force . One last note. This book is not expressly about donald trump. However, to write but White Collar Crime and corruption and not mention him would he pick discussing the accounting fraud scandals of the 1990s and 2001s without cover enron or ponzi schemes without mentioning bernie madoff, trump took advantages of system that fifths first, second, third, and seemingly infin nat chances to the elite. He had men pressures with the law and with Lawless Associates that came out ahead time and time again. Donald trump was not the first privileged american to use apparent, unlawful behavior no gain and sustain power and wealth. And then to use that wealth to gain immunity from further offenses. What makes him unique is how high he climbed. Its hard to envision a future where justice catches up with him. But for now, lets imagine a world with a government had held donald trump accounteddable for many phones he committed well before he launched his president ial came pain in 2015, at pulitzer price win investigate identify journalis has observed, that the world where President Trump is an impossibility. Its within our power to create that world where he and anyone like him is an impossibility. The damage already done by our 45th president demonstrates the dangers we face if we fail to do. So thank you. And ill handed over to helene. Thank you from a terrific introduction and righting writing this book. You answered my first question. I was going to ask you to define White Collar Crime which you dead in the reading. I want to physical up on Something Else you started to touch during the reading. Why do we judge White Collar Crime so loosely and lets harshly than Violent Crime . White collar crime cost ben 300 billion to 800 billion a year while property crime is much, much less and yet which one are you more likely to go to jail for, which one are you moe likely to face social sanctions for, which one are you going to be judge moder hashly for and why . 300 million diz was just look a little fraud and embezzlement estimates. Theres not official measurement from the fbi or from the broader department of justice on White Collar Crime but the reason there is two Justice System inside america is that the people who have the access to commit these kind of collar offenses whether its insider trading, money lawnerring, tend to be in the upper etch echelon of society, can hire armies of lawyers and its intimidating for prosecutors to go after. The when Something Like that could be very time consuming. So it is easier to do things like prosecute folks with less connections and less money and one example would be after the financial crisis, where cy veeps, the cy vance went have a small back in chinatown and instead of the executives there and convictions the executives were overturned even though the lower level employees pleaded guilty already but he did that instead of prosecuting any of the major wall street banks that were in his purview and again, i think its a mindset. Its a mindset of being intimidated by the very wealthy and identifying women the because youre from the same class and that seems to be what is going on. Okay. Is White Collar Crime growing or just more conscious of it now post the financial crisis, or there is even a way to really tell whether this is happening or not. Its hard to really to the because of the way its measure evidence but it appears that White Collar Crime is not only the rise but prosecution of high end corporations and individuals is declining especially now in the trump era. Why . Why do we know what it is or why . Both. When you look at major one of the Major Corporate law firms put our a client memo telling them that was the case and know because a law professor at duke is measuring things like deferred prosecution and nonprosecution agreements. We know because we can see toward the en the Obama Administration did a very poor job of going after the bankers, toward the end of his administration, he did step up enforcement of White Collar Crime and we have seen cases they were working on when trump took over a lot of those cases were either dropped or the penalties much smaller than had been being negotiated prior to that. Why do i think its on the rise and because theres not a lot of downside to it. Why not . For those who have decided that who dont have empathy for the victims, who dont care about others and who theyre harming, will cheat to get ahead, and its like for many people, things like tax evasion or Money Laundering or Campaign Finance violations its just like feeding, and if speeding and if they get a ticket no one will put him in jail. Could donald trump get elected in a cup tritt that takes White Collar Crime seriously. Not a chance. Why not. If our country had a fair criminal Justice System bit now donald trump would have spent time in federal prison instead of the oval office. I have no doubt. Okay. So, theres something you discuss insistent immunity. I want you to define it and explain donald trump is probably a good example as any but probably others how it works to protect people and how it sort of processes through and how we think about it. Sure. I think theres this thing called implicit immunity for the upper class and its implicit where unless you do something really agree yous, youre going to egregious you going to get away from small infractions from cradle to grave and theres a couple elaborate at more. Thats coupled with a police of mutually assured immunity and i think that is a piece of it. So let me explain. What is that . Let me explain. If you grow up can back any days when marijuana was illegal if you asked any milled upper middle class white kid whether they were private school or Public Schools, whether there were party where toes underage drink organize pot smoking and pot dealing, off course there was and what happened happens the . Kids get kicked out of school but there arent no one calls the police on them. Right . Similarly if there were parties that people had in their homes, loud and a neighbor might call the police and the police say turn down the music and send the kid home. Thats upper middle class and im not saying thats a bad thing. Im saying the reverse is true that if youre from if youre poor or a person of color and you could be have your life ruined by being arrested for these kinds of things and you live your life when youre wealthier you live your life in more private spaces, private schools instead of Public Schools. So where the Public Schools are becoming places where the police roam the allwaysing and nark on kids instead of kids growing ought and negotiate, in private schools there arent Police Officers in there and that kind of duality is how also works as life goingson. So when i said mutually assured immunity. A great example would be jeff epstein. For years he got away with his behavior and the mutually awe shourd immune is you dont need to extort or blackmail. Someone new that jeff epstein had a videooff them or set them up with a relationship with an underage girl they know he knows that sort what happens as a result . They dont talk pout what else he is doing. And thats one extreme example put i plays out in all kind offed ways and not just in financial crimes that cupid ive kind of mutually assured dough dont now epstein committed White Collar Crime or not. The sources of his his money are midhouse. Incredible coincidence that a guy who didnt even graduate from college, maybe a good math brain was imagining hundreds of millions of dollars of people money and while he was supposedly managing it he spent more time looking up or rapes young girls three time as day and traveling around the world. Seems to me that there was some either an explicit quid pro quo or people gave him money as a way of keeping himself quiet be went dough. No. No ever saw him trading. But the implicit immunity that is cradle to grave and not just white collar offenses. Remember the kid who was he was drinking and driving. The affluenza kid. His hour says my kid is wealth and his parents dont Pay Attention and gets whatever he want and tear my spoiled and he was behind a car and killed a butch bunch of people and that worked the first time around for him. The a of affluenza defense and part of it is most of the judge, a lot of jumped are white mensch and maybe they look back on their paste and say i did things that werent entirely within the bounds of law and want to be giving people like them a Second Chance. And just to be clear, i think Second Chances and forgiveness are really important and the way you should happen drug offenses in this country should be the state level. Shouldnt have prison. Should have treatment. Theres a lot one problem that folks like me who follow these White Collar Crimes get to were intentions with the bowlish abolition, abolish the police, get rid of prison, and you say but wait a second. Arent we trying to say we should be locking up these executives . How does that all fit in there in and i think that i think incarceration is appropriate but incarceration that these folks end up with, these a real thing. And its really these places have kosher food, come mary commissary list you can get pop tarts. No one wants to be locked up and doesnt sound bless superintendent but in these clubs might might even be yoga. Its not the same kind of situation that you see street criminals. Its two tiered even if after all of this the white collar felon ends up in prison. What get you interested in writing about this subject. I think ive always been interested in White Collar Crime. Are you hinting about the acknowledgment . No. Im not but you can tell people. I actually really serious. What got you interested in this . Because i know you write about housing in the past and which had a huge during the financial crisis, which had a huge motive of White Collar Crime attached and im curious about your journey. As it happens my first boyfriend was a white collar criminal. I want to hear more about this. So do the viewers. Im happy toes but i went to i grew up in the midwest and was from michigan and i went to a private school the same one that mitt romney taped and i was dating an 11th grader when i was in tenth grade and was quite smitten will have for superficial reasons and he got suspended from school shortly after we started dating and i he wouldnt tell me why and he was 0 i couldnt see him much while he was spunked and he finally admitted to me that he had been caught embezzling from the school store and this school store was a place where students buy candies and notebooks and apparent my what he was doing is parents would if you were a bored were put money in your account so you could buy things without having no one had credit cards and if opportunity do didnt use their monthly allowance he would take it. Maybe buy candy and give me candy so i benefited from the proceeds of that but that was one thing. I remember what struck me i didnt break up with him right away and my parents were irate and father said once a cheater, always a cheater. If hes cheating the school hes going to he could on you. Said, nonsense, here gore. Im in longsuper girl they were right. Head at another girlfriend back home and he denied it. Sounds familiar. And finally he confessed and i finally believed them instead of the lies. That get me interested in the fact i could be duped so easily. Another question. Whatever happened to him . I tried to find him on facebook. I dont know. I dont want to good into details because i dont want to ruin his life or anything. But anyway so go back. Tell me the other part. If you also encountered in my career when i first not out of law school a pressure with White Collar Crime and thats what this experience turned me bo an academic interested in the financial crisis and ultimately the topic of White Collar Crime it and was i worked at a wealth request law firm and i was in the Regulatory Department dealing with sweepstakes rules and marketing approvals and i had a client who did a lot of marketing, telemarketing and we hit it off so well the general counsel there they invited know come inhouse which is a dream. When i work at a Corporate Law firm you could work from home and i never saw day light. I was there all day every day and when i got this opportunity to go inhouse i thought it would be a deposit lifestyle and more time to a decent lifestyle and more time to read bangs. That didnt happen. I no to work for this Manning Company and within a few years i come to find out they had been committing massive fraud. They had only came out because the the company had gone through a merger and he company that acquired them took roll discovered that our managers had been cooking the books and one of them went to federal prison and the main guy, the chairman, they tried him three times. Two hung juries, and a third time that it prosecuted and send him to federal prison, and that left on impression on me. After that happened, the irony is before they went to jail, but after they were kicked out of our company, they had to do a Forensic Audit in my company and hired arthur anderson, and that was 1998. And the enron meltdown was about to. So 2002. So we were a company that was Accounting Firm before enron and that got me interested in finance and then i went to work at fidelity and learned pout the security frauds and when the financial crisis hit these things came together. Okay. And how long had you did you work on this book . I had worked on this particular book i think i got the book contract in march of 2019. This is pretty fast for a book i think. And one of things that struck me when reading this book is that we have had a massive explosion of White Collar Crime in the past and the term came about is during the first gilded aim. Who wassed word edward sutherland. White collar crime is a generic term. He gives his president ial address anyones to go home to a study. Up until that time criminologists were focusing on that crime was correlated with poverty and it sounds familiar and if you lived in a poorer neighborhood, if you had a broken family therefore that environment and he said wait a minute what about these wealthy old men in Large Businesses . They are often involved in crime and thats why he wanted to talk about crime in the whole area and whats interesting at that time he defined whitecollar crime as someone with respectability high social status who commits crime in their occupation. His definition is with status. That had to be a high status individual who was cheating or committing crime but that was 1939. He wrote a book also called white caller crime entirely about corporate crime. He was focusing on the robber barons of the 19th 19th century antitrust violation, Union Busting and focused on industrial crime and in his book there were major corporations at that time and his publisher would let them publish it. They redacted the name in one of the chapters and it got published at that time in the 1950s whereby the end of the year he had died. It was the incredibly tragic. He was walking in indiana on the beach one day he slipped and fell and had a heart attack and died. Because he wasnt there to continue on his work although his disciples and others over the years unfortunately there has been a shift in whitecollar crime that is so if you ask most they would say whitecollar crimes or things that are the things i was listing by offenses but it would be broader and im trying to return to that router definition. Whats even worse than those is when you look at, when you ask criminologists they agree there is no draymond on what it is. Some include occupational crime and when the fbi collects data that someone writes a bad check when the account is empty and liberally tries to pass off a check to a bank or something that is counted as a whitecollar crime and welfare crime and when someone takes cash out of the Cash Register at work area and that is where the words come from. What does white color stand for . White color as opposed to bluecollar so the whitecollar thinking is somewhat a professional type who wears a white shirt to work as opposed to blue shirt and when i think about that the way whitecollar crime is defined there is now bluecollar white crime and that wasnt the idea. One of the things that fascinated me in your book you say that whitecollar crime is not violent and not quite victimless but its not causing physical violence but in fact as you point out thats not true. The Sackler Family which is behind the oxycontin Opioid Epidemic is a major example and another example i can think of off the top of my head is whats going on with pg e in california and the fires there. Where there are number people have died in fires caused by carelessness at the utility and the executives thereof. They knew the power lines in the wall street journal reported in its in the book to pg e knew that these were power lines that would cause places and instead of investing the money they had they. Dividends to shareholders. That means, so it is, maybe we dont call it violence but its dangerous. It causes death. C i think its violence. The form of violence but why dont we think of it that way . Think of it as oh the sackler money until a year or two ago was still quite respectable and it probably will be again right . It will be forgotten in their name welcome back. Theres an expression that man created god in his image. Wealthy white men mostly have created law in their own image so if you look at trump 200,000 people have died from the coronavirus a good portion of them would be alive if he took seriously the risk and was honest about it. Is that violence . It sure does seem like it but people, its not treated that way. One thing in the book you made a contention that i thought was interested that the antivaxxers but could be traced to the formulaic explosion in our country. Can you explain that because that really fascinated me. I was trying to give examples of the cost that cant be quantified of whitecollar crime and corruption and its about losing faith in institutions. Ill give an example of losing faith in government or business and heres the deal. We need big businesses. They are going to go away. Im not going to start making my own medicine from home or taken part in making Home Remedies for aspirin or whatever. Im not going to publish my own looks by writing them out by hand. In a lot of ways we need to and its helpful and beneficial to society to have Large Businesses that can make some of the products that we need. That is clear and we need things like flu vaccine vaccines dont need things like measles inoculations could otherwise its going to be a miserable life. Big pharma is not all that trusted. If you look at the Sackler Family through the opiate epidemic or other companies where they have classaction settlements or things cause harm but no one admitted people lose all dressed and pharmaceutical companies in all of their products because of these examples and so i do believe when the antivaxxers say without sound evidence at all that certain vaccines cause autism its not true but its easy for people to believe that it received these executives paraded across lying about it and having people get sick or die from it. I am pro vaccine normally. Im sure joe biden is to be in the debate last night he said he wouldnt take it. They dont trust donald trump and is pressured to get it vaccines out for the coronavirus and i think thats a problem. Im not sure that i trust anything he is doing either so again this is the danger and the downside of that is a could cause more disease. People dont get the measles vaccine its a really deadly disease. We eradicate it that so i do think it has an impact. So it becomes whitecollar crime becomes a threat to our health but its also a threat to our democracy as you put it in the book. How do you see that . How do you see it as a threat to democracy . We can look at money in politics and money in politics sometimes is perfectly legal but sometimes its not so citizens he united in subsequent cases and even before that i go through the history before Citizens United has led a lot of big money and sometimes illegal money and foreign money that shouldnt be there, money that was allowed to be given into the political process affecting who gets elected and what laws can be made and people are afraid sometimes even if you were on the receiving end of Campaign Contributions for people who want to manipulate the system to help them continue in their bad ways. Or predatory ways. People can be afraid to take on individuals because they may launch a campaign against them. This money thats sloshing around the system makes it very hard for us to get laws and for us to get a tax code and for us to get i could say medicare for all the things that would help everybody and help share prosperity and small businesses. Those things get stuck it does people who want to help the general public the small number people who dont want to help the general public can block that because they have so much money. Right in before i continue i just want to say if you have questions please put them in the q a box on zoom. I will get to them in about 10 minutes. Can you talk about another thing that has become a huge factor in our public corruption which is the mcdonald case. What is it and how did it affect everything, basically whitecollar crime Going Forward . The mcdonald case involves the governor of virginia who took hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and cash and vacations from a friendly businessman literally in exchange, theres no question come exchange for access to government officials in hopes that he would be able to get a product he thought would pass some sort of health value derived from tobacco. And no question tons of money was given to the governor and his wife. The money was in exchange for access but the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that did not violate our antibribery laws because although there was a quid pro quo there wasnt any official action so access, connections to other state officials and making introductions to universities to help her studies is considered a official action so therefore it was fine, its fine under the federal bribery statutes. It was the hobbs act with the Supreme Court took the opportunity to say lets also take a look at the bribery statute as it applies to writing federal officials and this kind of thing is perfectly legal. The deal is that could be fixed by congress. There was a problem with that statute that we talked about earlier. They should fix fix it. You could change the rules and prohibit that kind of behavior but they havent even tried. Right. Its astonishing actually and i wonder if you think congress has done that. May be some people like having the money. I dont know why they would make it a priority and whats interesting is an earlier case of a similar topic in Justice Scalia wrote and i think it was the concurrence for that decision explained to congress to just fix fix it and he gave n example. Our laws for bid any kind of gift even if theres no quid pro quo from a labor Union Official at gifts to a labor union manager. It doesnt matter the dollar amount or if its a quid pro quo. You asked me why, i dont know. Okay, so ill ask a couple more questions before he turned to the audience. What do you think could be done to solve all of this and how could we make things better . Do you of the plan in the book . I do. I think it needs to be a mindset change to begin with and the mindset has to be saying look people who have a lot of power have been getting away with these kinds of crimes that victimized people in order to deal with it we need to consolidate in have one decision and the department of justice that deals with these bigmoney crimes. I would put public corruption together with corporate crime and crime by powerful people. The folks there would not be measured by how many cases they sell or prosecution agreements that do but it would be understood that they would carefully take cases and take them for as long as they needed to take them and not just settle on convenience but take it to trial if necessary to set an example. Another decision would be to defund it. The second thing these are the six fixes i talk about in the book. But the second thing we need to do is tighten up the rules and the tools that the prosecutors use of things like fixing our laws. Doesnt matter if her prosecutor tries to use the law is not going to work for a sprit similarly the wire fraud statute if you followed the case where the conviction of Richard Kelly was overturned because even though she deliberately moved, had the traffic cones move to as retribution to one of governor chris christies, someone didnt support him in his campaign for reelection, it didnt count. So we need to fix that so we can also make that public corruption criminal. Im going to put my glasses on so i can look at more of these. The third thing is to protect victims of whitecollar crime. One of the states has a registry for predators. I think financial predators cause a lot of harm and that should be listed also. I also think we need to empower whistleblowers. There is a hodgepodge of laws to protect whistleblowers that are inconsistent and yet one of the most important statutes we have the false claims act brings in billions of dollars a year. This is where ordinary people have standing to bring a lawsuit against any business that has a contact with the federal government. This laws been around since Abraham Lincoln and its called the lincoln lawn log is just not broad enough yet. The other thing, the fourth thing i would do is journalists. Why is that so important . Independent journalists have the time to dig deeply into issues and often the work of a journalist that embarrasses or enlightens prosecutors who can then pick up on that investigation when they dont always have resources and pursue criminal matters. I also think in addition to journalists being empowered we need to close the loopholes in the tax law. This is an area of in addition to cracking down on tax invaders at the highest level which we are not doing it where underfunding the irs because their budget has been slashed we also need to make it more fair. They are huge loopholes for especially hedge funds and ordinary people pay way more than 750 a year in taxes. I also think we need to the Justice Department needs to better track and measure whitecollar crime. Theres an expression business you cant manage what you cant figure and its a truism and we actually have to get a handle on the numbers here. My last question before i turned to the audience is there a story that sticks with you from the book and what it said on why . A story that sticks with with me from the book. There are so many but i think one of the ones that sticks with me the most is the story of deborah kelly. Who is she . Deborah kelly was someone who worked on wall street and sold lots. She was somebody who helps bigmoney managers, she was a middle woman who would sell bonds which are a form of investment to pension funds. She got involved with pension fund fraud scandals where she and another person, she would make commissions so she spotted a big pile of money which was a Retirement Fund for a lot of new york workers and she and someone else decided to get in the good graces of someone who could direct trade are weighing commissions was to give him cocaine and prostitutes and other things like that and she got caught so did the guy she was working but then so did the guy managing this giant milliondollar pension fund and at the end of the day she was tried a convicted and at her sentencing the judge gave her no prison time. And not only did he give her no prison time but he just gave her probation and said you just seem like youre really good person which is good for her. She had to start her life full over. She went to the east coast and went to california got into development at one of the public universities in california and good for her. That seems really great. Its one of the things that sticks with me is so incredibly unfair but forgiveness is for that it emphasizes how many Second Chances for people who judges things are nice and what does nice mean . Nice means maybe look nice, maybe you have money but what does it mean to be nice to be given a Second Chance and that joysticks with me because if you look at somebody who accidentally boated when they didnt know or accidentally voted when she didnt know a felon, former felon wasnt allowed to vote and was thrown into prison for years. Its just unbelievable to me so that sticks with me still. I didnt begin the book this way but initially i began the book with pay no attention to the prostitutes in the cocaine, follow the money and thats my message here about law and order. Follow the money. Okay. First question come in reading your book i thought a lot about justice brandeis. Had we do with the economic consequences of having business is so large that the economy cant afford for them to broadly failed even when the gains happen immorally or criminally. Enforcing antitrust laws is a start but i think theres a whole project. Teachout has a new book out about this and i think our antitrust laws were eviscerated over the years and sometimes business is bad. No company should be too big to fail and so it might make sense to break up some of these companies. The other thing to keep in mind that company could survive but what about holding the executives individually accountable for making decisions . A corporation may have personal attributes under the constitution but there have to be real humans to act on its behalf and those people need to be held accountable and that needs to change. Another question that almost reads like a followup but is actually by someone else Many Companies develop compliance antifraud antimoney programs but why did these programs fail for businesses . Why did they fail in preventing whitecollar crimes . They failed because there is a strong incentive by some people to cheat as thats how they make money and companies, ill give you great a great example. David and rich just wrote a book called dark towers. I cant recommend it enough. I know im supposed to be pushing my own book but if you have a moment its wonderful. I have the audible and i really like it. Its complicated but what you can see is driven from the top ahead of the bank wanted to make numbers that were unbelievable. This is a bit like bill black a professor and criminologist. He talks about whats called control fraud worse and executive gets control of the company and sets numbers. If you want to have 25 growth next year no matter what and then he says i dont want to know all the details and pushes and pushes and pushes and people get hired if they dont make the numbers. C are you referring to wells fargo by chance . Well yes wells fargo is another example of this happening and ultimately he ended up retiring with 100 plus Million Dollars after he finds he got despite what is happening with millions of accounts being opened without customers approval. Part of what can happen is the compliance function that an organization can be so diverted. That happened in with a Washington Mutual when no one listened to the head of complaints. One Senior Executive doesnt want to hear bad news you dont hear bad news and thats what happened. Also i should say its back to speeding again. For some of these people getting in trouble is just part of business and if you look at some of these banks that talk about like wells fargo they offend again and again and again and some of them have i related the constitution resulting in convicting the firm but no. Also whats interesting is the research a new paper by Randy Garrett of took that talks about failure to prosecute even when a corporation enters into a deferred agreement. Very rarely is the Senior Executive prosecuted so why would anyone have any incentive if all they want to do is make our money . They just look at this as suggestions. The law is a suggestion like Donald Trumps said before and what he apparently said the other day to Michael Colin that Michael Cohen revealed on television at one point he was cheating the irs and the irs sent him a check. He said arent they idiots for giving this to make . Thats the mindset of some of these sociopaths and so why wouldnt they keep doing it unless you stop them and take their money where their liberty they will continue to do it. That seems to be why the compliance programs dont work because they are poured into the same people who are robbing the company. That makes total and complete sense. Another question that im actually combining here do you know if theres a racial divide and sentencing for whitecollar criminals . To whitecollar criminals received different treatment than lack whitecollar criminals . I dont know of any studies. What i will notice is it doesnt seem like its a coincidence that the only banker who was convicted in connection with the mortgage not down involved in these toxic mortgagebacked securities was not white. He was born in egypt and raised in michigan. He had a middle eastern sounding name. Do i think thats an accident . I dont. I had not fully studied how this plays out but i think it would be a great thing to look into. Its a terrific, turf the question actually. Another question that came in is, is there anything in your book about the Panama Papers and is it tied to whitecollar crime in the United States . There is. If you things about the Panama Papers and some stuff that is tragic about a journalist who was using the Panama Papers to expose people on the malta and you can. About that at the thing about the Panama Papers is we are often thinking con seca was running all these offshore Shell Companies and is the stuff that happens in panama. There should be something called the delaware papers because you dont need to go offshore to find a vehicle to launder money creag United States is now a moneylaundering haven and they are doing a good job of helping that out. We have the rapine a few minutes so im going to ask you a question which is, is there anything i didnt ask or the audience didnt ask that we should discuss for a few minutes . Wow. Thats a really great question. Theres something i want to ask you. In reading the book, and taking control of the questions now. You are a lawyer. Thats what i get for asking this. Spending time reading the book and in our conversation today what contribution do you think this book makes or what is unique about this . Im sure youve. And thought about whitecollar crime before. Well i think it sums everything up. Whitecollar crime in looks is usually told in extreme episodes like the book he just referenced by the news york times journalist or as part of one piece like jesse eisengers book about how federal prosecutors dont prosecute crime is much but you dont see a huge wrap around. This is the problem, where does it come from, here is how it is grown and here are a bunch of different examples of different ways of manifest and heres what we can do about it. To me that was what really got me about the book and intrigue me up about why wanted to do this panel so badly. That was like my goal. But you still did didnt answer my question we have about two minutes. I guess what you didnt ask me is am i pessimistic or optimistic about this problem . The my writing this thing and saying well here we are and it only gets worse from here or do i see any kind of light at the end of the tumult that is isnt a train coming our direction . Right and can you please answer that . I mean i think im optimistic by nature despite the fact that i look at these kind of depressing blood boiling topics because im thinking people care about this issue still and i think the reason why we havent done anything about it its periodically surfaces and hasnt really been told holistically. Im very hopeful that if we have a new president ial of administrations there will be a will to pick up this work in their people in the senate like Elizabeth Warren and others who care about the anticorruption measures. I center the book and i think her book arrives tomorrow so my hope is i can get an audience with some of these Public Officials to do more than just write a book but also change the world. Okay, all right well thank you. I think i need to wrap up here so i think i need to turn this over to the people at but thank you for doing this and everybody you need to go get this book. Thank you both so much for being here today. We really appreciate your time. Such an engaging discussion that we have had here today. Loved hearing the personal anecdotes and the foray into whitecollar crime along with many of the other topics we covered today. I did put in the chat a couple ways you can copy purchase a copy of the book that i know myself i cant wait to read it. Thank you for joining us can check out the Upcoming Events at the center of social justice which are also posted in the chat today. Thank you everyone for joining us. Take care. I am truly delighted today to welcome to talk about there a section exceptional book