White-collar crime is a grave threat to corporations, professional associations, and potential individual victims of financial fraud. For the past ten years, Lisa Lawler, founder of the White-Collar Wives Project, has had a front row seat behind the scenes of over two hundred white-collar criminal and civil cases, many of which have made headline news. According to the DOJ, there are on average 5,000 white-collar criminal prosecutions annually. Collectively, these crimes result in billions of dollars of financial loss to corporations, and to individual victims. But what is seldom considered are the far reaching and long lasting consequences perps impose on their unsuspecting family members. Not only are families left in financial ruin, they must also endure the miscalculated guilt by association that is routinely placed upon them. While companies can usually overcome the financial and reputational consequences of occupational crimes, families have no financial safety net, nor a PR firm to rebuild their reputation.

While the culpability of any white-collar crime lies squarely on the shoulders of the bad actors who commit them, companies that lack constructive internal controls play a role in the commission of these crimes. In the current climate of the DOJ’s commitment to hold executives individually accountable for corporate crime, it is more important than ever for companies, professional associations, Chambers of Commerce, law firms, doctors, attorneys, etc. to have effective anti-fraud programming in place.

The WCWP has highly specialized knowledge of what takes place behind the scenes of headline making occupational crimes. This acute understanding created the motivation to bring much needed real life anti-fraud programming to the compliance arena. A New Perspective on Deterrence takes a deep and engaging dive into the dark corners of white-collar crime with a comprehensive six-module anti-fraud course which is the first of its kind.

Five-thousand white-collar criminal prosecutions per year points to the indisputable fact that traditional compliance and deterrence efforts continue to fall short. Part of the problem is that too many companies either don’t have an anti-fraud program built into their compliance training, don’t have any compliance programming at all, or are relying too heavily upon software as a sole means of conveying rules, regulations, company culture, and ethics. Technology is the cornerstone of most businesses today, but the compliance problem cannot be solved by technology alone because tech does not have free will nor can it emulate human ethics and agendas.

Collectively, companies spend billions of dollars on compliance programming (including internal fraud detection), despite the fact that most employees are risk averse. The fact that trillions of dollars are continuing to be lost to fraud points to the fact that current remedial compliance programming is not wholly effective, and high dollar software has little to no efficacy in fraud prevention. Occupational crimes are committed by high risk tolerant workers and anti-fraud programming must be targeted directly at that population. A New Perspective on Deterrence was created specifically for this population and goes far beyond the norms of general and specific deterrence theories and other proforma antifraud applications. Compliance programs that do not address the full spectrum of risks associated with occupational crime, do not have a fully functional or effective compliance program, but rather, an illusory veil of a perception of deterrence.

External Deterrence Theory (EDT) is at the core of Lisa Lawler’s novel approach to anti-fraud programming and was derived from a ten-year study of white-collar perps, the crimes they committed, and the occupations which are most affected. This course shines a light on the extraordinarily high personal and professional cost to those who perpetrate occupational fraud.

External Deterrence Theory (EDT) goes far beyond a bad actor’s “capture and punishment” and immerses employees into the real-life consequences of occupational crime that have, until now, not been widely known to the public. Where traditional deterrence pushes employees toward compliance to promote deterrence, EDT pushes employees toward deterrence to pull them into compliance. This is a game changer for all stakeholders. It takes more than checking a box, a signature on a line, or the threat of incarceration to keep bad actors on the right side of the law. The WCWP’s A New Perspective on Deterrence course makes compliance personal, and making compliance personal is the answer to the compliance problem.

Doing business in today’s highly competitive and risk filled global marketplace is an occupational hazard. That’s why there are so many agencies that enforce regulations and prosecute those who violate them. In fact, the need for enforcement has created a multibillion-dollar compliance industry to help keep workers on the right side of the SEC, DOJ, FCPA, FTC, and countless other regulatory agencies worldwide. Compliance programming that lacks efficacy places individuals (and their families) at risk of prosecution which results in loss of employment, reputation, financial stability, and most significantly, loss of family, and incarceration. A New Perspective on Deterrence motivates high-risk tolerant employees to take compliance and the law seriously, and is guaranteed to keep them on the path of adherence.

Perps not only bring about the death of their professional lives and expose their company and professional trade to public scrutiny, they also cause family ties to bend, and more often than not, break. This is because it is not only the perps who are (rightly) punished, but through no fault of their own, the families of these perps must themselves endure ruinous legal, economic, and emotional consequences. When a perp goes to prison, so does their family. And unlike corporations, there are no contingency funds to make the family solvent again, and no PR firm to rebuild their reputation. Companies large and small must do more than the bare minimum in the deterrence arena regarding compliance and ethics training because compliance programming should and must be more than “window dressing” to meet its goal.  

If you don’t think the WCWP has a place in your anti-fraud programming, you’re not utilizing the most powerful tool in your compliance toolkit.