Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for being here today and joining us for this important event celebrating professor jennifers new book how dirty money the shocking injustice and unseen cost of whitecollar crime. I am the director of the center for social justice at western new England University school of law which works to advance justice through research, education, advocacy and public engagement. Please check out our website if you would like to learn more about our social justice initiatives and the ways we are strengthening collaborative efforts between the school of law and the region, the work towards a more 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 speakers, louise and random house, wneu Marketing Team and all of you for your support. I also want to let you know that todays program will be aired on cspan booktv following this event. At the end of todays program, please stay tuned for Upcoming Events and information about how you can obtain your own book of professor taubs books. We hope that you will ask questions and we will take them at the end of the program. To so, enter in the question box at the bottom of the screen. With that i will turn things over to sudha setty. As she said, im the dean of University School of law and im delighted to welcome everyone. Hosted by the center for social justice, and i also have the pleasure of introducing my colleague, Jennifer Taub and helaine olen. Jennifer is the newest member of the western new England School of law faculty, having just joined us last month and i think i speak for my colleagues and saying how delighted we are to count her as a member of our community and tonight we get to celebrate the release of professor taubs new book, big dirty money, which was just released yesterday by a division of Penguin Random house. With the recommendations to promote fairness and in the Justice System to enhance transparency to provide a powerful mean for anticorruption initiatives and although she could not have predicted the timing of this books completion would coincide with new revelations about tax returns and tax avoidance strategy President Trump for research and observations and recommendations resonate with that we read in the news and could not be more timely. We will be in conversation today with Washington Post opinion columnist on personal finance health is exposing the dark dark side of the financial industry and senior managing editor and speaks widely with commentary on political and Economic Issues and serves on the Advisory Board of the hardship reporting project. Before the speakers began i would like to read one little snippet of things assert taub book and it was hard to narrow down to just one. To work has been appropriately reviewed the United States is drowning in dirty money we constructed a twotiered system of justice of Campaign Finance of payouts and bankruptcies. Jennifer taub pretzels with on those failures of its wealthy creditors too big to fail and to spectacular to jail with journalism and justice anyone should take notice. Today we are taking notice and with that i will turn it over to Jennifer Taub thank you so much. Thank you so much and everyone for such a warm welcome. The dean promised to actually go out and have coffee together but i think this is a good substitute. I will begin by reading of passages. And i know she has some tough questions and one of the people she admires is a member of congress katie. And that should be a wide conversation. Big cheaters often prosper and they do it right in front of our faces. You can see them almost daily in your twitter feed and on broadcast and cable news program. These are common now cheating the public that is the new normal. And you are more likely to see wealthy and wellconnected white men just after valentines day in 2020 President Donald Trump granted clemency to a slew of felons. Bribery, investment fraud, tax evasion, medicare fraud, public corruption , computer hacking and extortion coverups, moneylaundering, coverups, moneylaundering, cony to defraud the federal government, obstruction of justice, mail fraud and wire fraud. The official white house announcement use the words to describe these outlaws and made no mention of the ordinary people they victimized everywhere you look creditors have countless targets they may lie low for a brief period while waiting for the public outcry to fade and then go again. And to survive and thrive the rest of us are victims directly or indirectly we associate the word victim with crimes of violence. And those criminal acts by trusted business and government leaders and then more extensively mistreat crime. Whitecollar crime such as fraud and embezzlement and if we hundred Million Dollars per year. Around 16 billion according to the fbi. We also have a double standard in the american criminal Justice System that reflects and perpetuates in a quality a tour for advancement only available to the already affluent will be not only increase their power but also benefit from the criminal Justice System to incarcerate those of the lower social status that also attempt to use crime to get ahead. Eric garner a middleaged black man was surrounded by Police Officers tackle and suffocated for a small time tax dodge. And then one by one with tax evasion depriving the state of 5. 87 in the department of justice decided not to prosecute the Police Officer who killed garner and then to believe Excessive Force under the circumstances racism is baked into that conclusion can you imagine cops circling and tackling a white woman who would refuse to drop fraudulent tax return into a city mailbox . This book is not expressly about donald trump however to read about the times and corruption from the scandals of the 19 nineties and early 2000s and also running ponzi schemes without mentioning bernie made off and then those infinite chances to the elites many brushes with the law and associates time and time again. Donald trump is not the first privileged american and then use that wealth to gain immunity from references. Is hard to envision a future when justice would catch up with him but for now lets imagine a world where the government had held Donald John Trump accountable for the many offenses he apparently committed long before he launched the president ial campaign in 2015 that supports her prizewinning investigative journalist observed, that is the world with President Trump is the impossibility so to create that world where he and anyone like him is in improbability the damage is done by or for the president to demonstrate the dangers we face if we fail to do so. Thank you. And with age trophic introduction is going to ask you to defend whitecollar crime. So i want to follow up on Something Else you started to touch on so why do we judge whitecollar crime so loosely as you just pointed out between 300,000,000,800,000,000,000 per year and yet which was a more likely to go to jail for an which you judged more harshly for and why is that . Just to be clear to 30,800,000,000,000 was looking at the two categories but there is no official measurement from the fbi or the department of justice but the people of Insider Trading and it is intimidating for prosecutors to go after them to be timeconsuming with more and less money and then in manhattan and in chinatown and with those executives there. And with the will of all employees and instead of prosecuting that were in you it is a mindset to be intimidated by the very wealthy and also identify with them because you are from the same class and that is what is going on. s whitecollar crime going on we more of it with the financial crisis or is there a way to tel tell . Its hard to know because the way it is measured buts whitecollar crime that only on the rise but the prosecution has high and individuals is declining especially lee now in the trump era. Why do we think that is . What we know it is think it is . Both. Look at the Major Corporate law firms telling them that was the case we know those were law professor measure things like deferred prosecution and nonprosecution because we can see the Obama Administration did a very poor job and when trump took over and that penalty was much smaller to be negotiator prior to that because its not a lot of downside to it so why not and for those who decided who dont have empathy for the victims and who dont care about others and what we achieve to get ahead. People like tax evasion or Money Laundering for Campaign Finance regulation if they get a ticket they will pay the ticket. Her donald trump be elected a president that takes whitecollar crime seriously . Not a chance. If we had a fair criminal Justice System he was spent more time in federal prison than the oval office. I have no doubt. Something you discussed about insistent immunity there are others you could use of power works to protect people and with this process is through. There is immunity from the upper class where unless it is something really egregious you will get away with small infractions cradle to grave and that is coupled with the notion of mutually shared immunity. Let me explain what i mean. Back in the day when marijuana was legal in most places any uppermiddleclass white kid private school or Public School whether there were parties or underage drinking or pot smoking or dealing, of course there was what happened there . Maybe they were kicked out of school but nobody called the police on them. Similarly if there were parties people had in their homes a Neighbor Calls the police and they say turned on the music and thats a they calmly send the kids home thats how it works for uppermiddleclass. Im not saying thats a bad thing but the reverse is true that if you are poor or personal color you could have your life ruined by being arrested for these kinds of things and you live your life when you are wealthier and more private places like schools and city Public Schools so now it is resource officers will the hallways instead of letting them grow out of their problems and negotiate through in private school there are not Police Officers and that duality is as life goes on so when i said that mutually assured immunity jeffrey epstein. For years he got away with his behavior and that mutually assured immunity you need to extort or blackmail or bribe somebody or something and jeff epstein had video of them or set them up with a relationship with an underage girl they know he knows that so what happened as a result they dont talk about what else he is doing so it plays out in all kinds of ways that is mutually assured immunity. We dont know if epstein committed the whitecollar crime or not. It seems the incredible coincidence i think even graduated from college that was managing hundreds of millions of dollars of other peoples money and also spent most of his time raping young girls three times a day traveling around the world it seems like if there was the explicit quid pro quo or they gave him money to keep them quiet but we dont really know. We dont know because nobody ever saw him trading it is a very strange story. Also the implicit immunity, cradle to grave you might remember the kid who was drinking and driving his lawyer said my kid is wealthy the kids to Pay Attention thats why he was driving a car and killed a bunch of people. That worked the first time around and part of that is most of the judges, not all of them but a lot are white men and they said i did things within the bounds of law and wanted to give them a Second Chance i think the way we should handle drug offenses i think we should have treatment and not present but one of the problems to follow these whitecollar crime epidemics is the intention to abolish the police and then you say wait shouldnt they be locking up these executives . And i think incarceration is appropriate and the circumstances but to be clear the incarceration at the end of this that is a real thing they have kosher food you could get newsletters or pop tarts it doesnt sound present but its not terrible it could even be yoga. Is not the same kind of situation that you see street criminals. What made you are interested in writing about this subject . It always been interested in whitecollar crime. Im really curious what got you interested in this. And so with whitecollar crime attached to it. I think its two pieces my first boyfriend was a whitecollar criminal. I want to hear more about this. [laughter] i will not name names but i grew up in the midwest and i am from michigan went to the same school as mitt romney dating an 11th grader when i was in tenth grade i was very smitten for very superficial reasons and it turns out he was suspended shortly after we started dating. I couldnt see him much he admitted he was caught embezzling from the school store and apparently what he was doing the appearance of the money in your account and if a student to use the allowance he was taking it i dont know if it was out of the Cash Register but maybe buying candy and give me candy so i guess i benefited from that in some way that was one thing that was struck me is i didnt break up right away and my parents were irate on my father said once a cheater always a cheater than he will cheat on you. I said no. Hes gorgeous and i am in love. Superficial and they were right. He had another girlfriend back home and i caught him Even Holding Hands with her and he denied it. Doesnt sound familiar . So that was a little bit interesting i could do that so easily. Whatever happened to him . I try to find a month facebook. I know i want to go into details and want to ruin his life. So tell me the other part. But it is weird i also encounter in my career with the brush of whitecollar crime turning into an academic of the financial crisis i worked at a law firm and i was in the Law Department including sweepstakes rules and marketing rules and a client who did a lot of telemarketing and we hit it off so well that they invited me to come in house which is a dream. At least when i was in the Corporate Law firm i never saw the light i was there all day every day. When i got the opportunity to go in house i got a decent lifestyle. So the work at the Investment Company and within a few years they were committing massive fraud. They only came out it came through merger and the company that acquired them essentially discovered our managers were cooking the books and the main guy, the chairman, they tried him three times. They were too hung juries and the third time send him to federal prison. That made an impression on me but after that happened, the irony of that is going to jail after they were kicked out of the company they had to run an audit to see what went wrong they hired Arthur Anderson in 1998. They were a good guy at that time. We were a company before and ron. One and then i got interested in finance and worked at fidelity learning about security fraud. And the financial crisis hit they all came together. How long have you been working on the book . On this particular book i think i got the contract marc march 2019. This is pretty fast for a book i think. One of the things that struck me when reading the book we dont have an explosion of whitecollar crime in the past and that was during the first gilded age. But why is everyone so important to whitecollar crime . But he actually coins the term whitecollar criminal and whitecollar crime he was a sociologist and criminologist he was the president of the American Sociological Society was late december 1939 philadelphia saying bad things happen in philadelphia he has this moment where he gives a president ial address because up until that time they were focusing the crime was correlated with poverty to live in a poor neighborhood that therefore that environment and he said wait what about thes businesses and they are committing crime as a whole new area i want it is interesting is at that time he defined it to mean someone of respectability and high social status who commits crime in the course of their occupation so i had to be a high status individual through investments or cheating and that was a decade writing the book. It was all about corporate crime with antitrust violations and industrial crime and was naming and shaming major corporations at that time and his publisher will not let them publish it. And then to put fake names and then publish at that time in 1950 and then he was walking into Indiana University to teach slipped and fell and had a heart attack and died. s he wasnt there to continue on his work, his disciples over the years there has been a shift now is associated with the offense versus the offender prosecutors would say like mail fraud or wire fraud. And trying to return to the broader definition. And if you ask a criminologist they agree there is no agreement some include occupational crime and the other candidate is a whitecollar crime. Embezzlement only takes in that sense that is where the word comes from. That is what whitecollar stands for quick. Whitecollar as opposed to bluecollar . Whitecollar the thinking is a professional type who wears a white shirt to work as opposed to the blue shirt the way it is now defined that was in the idea of whitecollar bluecollar crime. We have a deal whitecollar crime is nonviolent not victimless but in fact you point out thats not true. And with the oxycontin opioid of endemic that is a major example another example of the top of my head going on with the jnd and california and the fires there were there are a number of people have died caused by carelessness at the utility. So they knew the power lines it was reported in this in the book the executives knew these were centuryold power lines and instead of investing the money they had to fix them they pay dividends to shareholders. Its not violent but is dangerous to cause death. Why do we think of it that way . And it is still quite respectable and that the name will come back. And that man created god and will see white men to treat on could create a law but if you look at trump 200,000 people have died and if they were honest about it sure does seem like it and its not treated that way. So you mentioned the anti baxter movement could be linked to that explosion and incurred you discuss that quick. I was trying to give examples of White Collar Crime and public corruption. I will give the example of government and business and here is the deal we need big business. They will not go away i will not start making my own medicine from home making homemade aspirin and take tree bark or publish my own books by writing them all out by hand. There is a lot of ways we need to do to have Large Businesses to make the products and services that we need. That is clear. We need flu vaccines and measles inoculations. So here is the connection to the whitecollar crime if big pharma is not that trusted. Look at the families to the Opioid Epidemic with big pharma or other companies with classaction settlements that nobody admitted, people start to lose trust in all Pharmaceutical Company and in all of their products because of these examples. So i believe in the anti baxter say certain vaccines cause autism. Its easier for people to believe that when they see the executives that are lying about the product and making a ton of money and people are getting sick and die so that could happen. I am absolutely. Vaccine normally i am show oh one biden is also the trump is putting pressure to get vaccines out for coronavirus. I think thats a problem so this is the danger and the downside of that people dont get the measles vaccine so that we eradicated. So whitecollar crime becomes a threat to our health but also to our democracy. How do you see that as a threat to democracy . We can look at money and politics, sometimes that is perfectly legal and other times it is not so is Citizens United there was a lot of big money and sometimes illegal money, foreign money that shouldnt be there into the political process what laws could be made and people are afraid sometimes even if not on the receiving end of Campaign Contributions for manipulating the System People occurred be afraid to take on because they want to Campaign Interest to get the tax code and medicare for all and to help Small Businesses and those who want to push things to help the general public the small number of people who dont want to happen just exploit them because they have to much money. If you have questions put them in the q a box so another thing that is a huge factor in public corruption is the mcdonald case. So that involves the governor of virginia getting jets in cash and vacation from a Family Business man no extra not that one no question of quid pro quo in hopes to get a product the Health Product right from tobacco that the money given to the governor and his wife and it was exchange for access but the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that did not violate antibribery laws because although there was a quid pro quo there wasnt any official action and nudging to other state officials and that was considered the official action so therefore so is fine and that statue and that actually do with the state official in the Supreme Court took the opportunity at the cost of bribing federal officials. So the deal is that could be fixed by congress but it hasnt and they should exit. And then to prohibit that kind of behavior but they have not even tried. That is astonishing and why do you think congress has done that . Maybe they like the money. Its not clear to me. But what is interesting dealing with similar topics that with the Justice Scalia wrote the concurrence for that decision for congress to fix and gave examples. For any kind of gift even if there is no quid pro quo from the labor Union Official it doesnt matter as a quid pro quo and you ask me why . I dont know. What do you think could be done to solve this . What could be better . It needs to be a mindset change to begin with. And to say look people who have a lot of power have been getting away with these kinds of crimes it in order to deal with it to have a department of justice with these big money crimes putting public corruption together with corporate crimes with the powerful top 1 percent where the folks there were did not be measured with the deferred prosecution agreement that it is understood they would carefully take cases for as long as they needed to take them to trial if necessary. The second thing we need to do is tighten up the rules so like anti bribery laws it doesnt matter they tried to use the la law. So following the bridge gate case where that conviction of kelly is overturned because she deliberately moved and retribution against governor Chris Christie in the campaign for reelection. They did not counsel we have to fix that to make that public corruption and criminal. I will put my glasses on but also to protect victims of whitecollar crime and we need a nationwide registry. You know there are statebystate registries for sexual predators i think financial predators should also be listed. Also empower whistleblowers there is a hodgepodge and yet one of the most important statues we have brings in billions of dollars per year to bring a lawsuit any business with a contact with the federal government is often called the lincoln law and is just not broad enough so that what i would do is fund independent journalist. Why is that so important . They have the time to do a deep into her shoes often the work of independent journalist and those who pick up on that investigation and then pursue criminal matters. I also think in addition to journalist being empowered with a loophole in the tax code this is an area in addition to cracking down on tax invaders which we are not doing and underfunding the irs , to make it more fair there are huge loopholes especially for hedge funds and others and ordinary people are paying more than 750 per year in taxes also the Justice Department needs to have better track of whitecollar crime you cant manage what you dont measure severe interested in managing this problem to get a handle on the numbers. My last question before i turned to the audience if a story sticks with you from the book what is it . There are so many what sticks with me the most is Deborah Kelly someone who worked on wall street and sold bonds and helped big Money Managers she was the middle woman who would sell bonds where the form of investment to Pension Funds she got in involved that by the way she paid commissions she spotted a big pile of money which is the Retirement Fund and then decided way to get into the good graces to direct trade and commissions was to give cocaine and other things like that. And the guy managing this giant multibilliondollar pension fund and at the end of the day tried and convicted and at the sentencing the judge gave no prison time. Not only that but very little probation and said because you seem like you are a good person. Good for her and she gets her her life over and in fact she left east coast and went to california and got a job at the public universities in development. Good for her. But it is so unfair forgiveness is for the fortunate and how many Second Chances and how much forgiveness there is what does nice mean cracks maybe look nice maybe have money, what does this mean to get a Second Chance . Because of you look at somebody with black woman accidentally voted and then to be thrown in prison for a year. It is unbelievable to me i didnt begin the book but initially i would begin with pay no attention to the prostitutes and cocaine and follow the money. Follow the money. First question and reading your book i saw the problem how do we do with the economic consequences that the economy cannot fail even when the gains are made criminally . With the antitrust laws is a start that antitrust laws were eviscerated over the years no company should be too big to fail. A company can survive or what about holding those executives accountable . But then there has to be real humans who act on this behalf and they need to be held accountable and that needs to change. So another question that reads like a followup Many Companies develop compliance and anti Money Laundering programs but why do they feel with whitecollar crimes . They fail there is a strong incentive by some people to cheat because that is how they make money i will give you a great example. This book called dark power i cannot recommend it enough i know supposed to be pushing my own book but if you have a moment it is wonderful i have the article. It is complicated but what you can see the head of the bank that they are unbelievable. And a law professor and criminologist talks about control fraud were executive gets control of the company we want to have 25 percent growth. And then set i dont want to know all the details and pushes and pushes and people are fired if they dont make the numbers. Are you referring to wells fargo . Yes. That is another example of this happening. Ultimately he ended up retiring with over a hundred Million Dollars even after the finds that he got despite what was happening with millions of accounts opened without customer approval support that is the compliance function can be subverted. That happened Washington Mutual it was a Senior Executive doesnt want to hear bad news you dont give them bad news it is not just speeding again is just the cost of doing business talk about hsbc and wells fargo again and again and again and then violated those agreements resulted in convicting the firm but now it is the Research Done recently talks about the failure to prosecute even when the corporation enters, very rarely is a Senior Executive prosecuted so why would anybody have the incentive if all they want to do is make more money . Is just a suggestion. Is donald trump said before to Michael Cohen he said he was cheating any sentiment check and said look or not doing this tonight and that is the mindset so why wouldnt they keep doing it . And the should stop them they will continue to do it. And why compliance programs dont work. That makes total and complete sense. Another question, do you know if there is a racial divide for convicted whitecollar criminals . To the receive different treatment . I dont know of any studies but i will notice it doesnt seem like it is a coincidence the only banker convicted in connection with the mortgage meltdown with the mortgagebacked securities was born in egypt, raised in michigan, middle eastern sounding name, do i think that is an accident . I dont. I have not fully studied how this plays out. But that would be a great thing to look into. That is a terrific question actually another question that came in is there anything about the Panama Papers and how does this tie into whitecollar crime in the United States . There are some about the Panama Papers some of it is tragic about the journalist who is using the papers in multi and you can read about that but the thing about the Panama Papers is we often think they were running all the offshore Shell Companies delaware they should be called the delaware papers youll need to go offshore to launder money the United States now is a moneylaundering haven and delaware does a good job to help that up on help them out. Is there anything i didnt ask for the audience didnt you think we should discuss . Thats a really great question. I know. Something i want to ask you sorry im taking control but in reading the book. Your lawyer thats what i get. So it contribution or what is unique about it . Im sure you have read about whitecollar crime before. I think it sums everything up. Whitecollar crime in boxes told in discrete episodes Like Deutsche Bank or the New York Times journalist for its part of one piece like health federal prosecutors dont prosecute crime is much but you dont see a huge wraparound this is the problem. Where does it come from and here is a bunch of different examples and here is what we can do about it so to me that is what grabbed me about the book and why i wanted to do the panel so badly. That was my goal. But you still didnt answer my question. [laughter] i guess you didnt ask if i was pessimistic or optimistic about the problem i say here we are it only gets worse from here or is there any light at the end of the tunnel . Can you please answer that . I think i am optimistic by nature although these are depressing and blood boiling topics because i think people care about this issue. The reason why we havent done anything about it, it periodically hasnt been told mystically than i am very hopeful that we have a new president ial Administration People can pick up the work there are people in the senate like Elizabeth Warren and others who care about anticorruption measures. I sent the book i believe it arrives tomorrow that we can get more officials than just write a book to change the world. Thank you. I need to wrap up i need to turn this over but i thank you for doing this and everybody go get the book. Thank you both so much for being here today we appreciate your time and discussion you had here today while hearing the personal anecdotes and foray into whitecollar crime along with many other topics we covered today. In the chat it but a couple of ways you can purchase a copy of the book. I cannot wait to read it. Check out the Upcoming Events on our website. Thank you very much for joining us. Take care. Its been ane of weeks. So, everything is good at this moment. Host its great to read your book. What an inspiring story and provocative book. If people are interested in whats going on in our country today, this is the book to