According to the DOJ, there are on average 5,000 white-collar criminal prosecutions annually, and collectively, these crimes result in billions of dollars of financial loss to corporations, and to individual victims. 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. The data collected over these ten years has revealed a new population of victims of occupational malfeasance - the innocent family members of the perps. Not only are families left in financial and emotional ruin as a result of this egregious familial and financial betrayal, but they must also endure the public’s miscalculated guilt by association that is routinely placed upon them. Through the contract of marriage, joint asset ownership becomes entangled in a spouse’s investigation/prosecution despite the court’s acknowledgement that innocent spouses are simply “collateral damage.” But there is nothing simple about being the innocent spouse (or children) of a white-collar criminal.

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, and in turn, to the ruin of the family of the perps. 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 occupational crimes 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 high risk tolerant workers 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 this new 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 occupational crime brings to those who perpetrate them.

External Deterrence Theory (EDT) goes far beyond a bad actor’s “capture and punishment” and immerses workers 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.

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.