Don’t Get Duped or Implicated: Kelly Richmond Pope on Navigating the Fraud Boom

// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

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Reginald Hardwick: From Illinois Soul, this is Dialogue. I'm Reginald Hardwick, news and public affairs director at Illinois Public Media. Dialogue is an exchange about culture straight from the soul. When was the last time you experienced a scam? Maybe you saw a yard sign promising thousands of dollars a week for working from home. Maybe you've received spam calls. I know I have on my phone. And the infamous Nigerian prince scam is still making the rounds after all of these years. Fraud is everywhere in society, and it can be extremely costly. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates more than $5 trillion a year is lost to fraud around the world. And for those hit by it, the aftermath can be painful. Take for example, this retiree who spoke to CBS News in 2024 after losing millions of dollars and her home to a romance scammer.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's not the material items that make a difference for me. It's the fact that I don't have any freedom. I don't have freedom anymore to go out with my girlfriends, have dinner. I don't have freedom to go do this or this experience. It's not that I don't have, you know, money or drive a new car or blah, blah, blah. It's the fact that I have no freedom. I'm very limited because of this scam.

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Reginald Hardwick: Forensic accountant Kelly Richmond Pope makes the case that it could happen to any of us, not just in terms of falling for it, but also committing fraud ourselves, whether we mean to or not. A few years back, she wrote all about this and what it can take to not get scammed yourself in a book called "Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories and Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry." It's available from Harvard Business Review Press. Pope is also a filmmaker and she's based in Illinois as the [Dr.] Barry J. Epstein endowed professor of forensic accounting at DePaul University. In October of 2025, Kelly Richmond Pope talked with Brian Mackey of the [21st] Show. Let's listen in.

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Brian Mackey: All right, as you talk about in the book, you've been interested in fraud for a long time. Maybe you can remind us what happened in Dixon, Illinois, in the northern part of the state that sort of took your interest to the next level.

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Kelly Richmond Pope: Well, um, what started the whole movie journey for me was what happened in Dixon, as you say. Um, the city comptroller by the name of Rita Cr[e]well had embezzled $53.7 million over a 20-year period. And I was blown away when I read the headlines — and the headlines in the Chicago Tribune [said] "City comptroller embezzles $30 million." So that was the headline. We hadn't even reached the $53.7 million level yet. And I remember reading the paper because I actually had a physical copy of the paper in my hand and I said, who steals that much money and no one knows that it's gone. And so I just started, um, researching where is Dixon and, um, you know, I'm not originally from the Chicagoland area, so it was 3 hours west of where I, um, was reading the paper, which was downtown Chicago. And I, um, at the time was doing on-camera interviews with white-collar felons, whistleblowers and victims of fraud. And I got my team together and I said, we've got to hit the road. We got to go to Dixon, we got to start talking to people. I want to understand what is the tone in the town? What are people saying about it? So I wanted to be there. So we started going back and forth to Dixon, doing man-on-the-street interviews and talking to key people that were around the fraudulent situation. And 5.5 years later, I had a documentary called "All the Queen's Horses," um, that, um, really changed my life because how many accounting professors, um, do a documentary that then ends up on Netflix and still now today lives on Amazon Prime.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah, and you know, it's, it's interesting you mentioned, uh, I think in the intro to the book, you say, you know, you do what any good accounting professor would do. I made a documentary. I'm not so sure how universal that sentiment is, but, you know, I wonder what it says to you that this story provokes so much intrigue, not just for you, but I mean, it's really captivated people across the country.

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Kelly Richmond Pope: Well, and I think it captivates so many people because Dixon represents any town, USA. So you think about population around 16,000 people, a place where you don't even think you need to lock your doors. Everyone knows everyone. So it's this place that gives the perception of safe. And so when you disturb that type of perception, everyone is intrigued. And so I think that's why, um, so many people just latched on to the story. And then when we look at the perpetrator, Rita Cr[u]well is not who you would think would pull off this type of caper. You just wouldn't think that someone that's, you know, born and bred — raised outside, born outside of the city limits of Dixon, but born [and] raised inside Dixon. Everybody loved her, trust[ed] her, knew her. You wouldn't think that that is the profile of a white-collar felon, but it was. So I think that people were just intrigued. Um, it was like, uh, the perfect storm of all these, um, variables coming together in this one fraud story. Then you throw on top of it that she was one of the number one quarter horse breeders in the, in the world — that just made it even juicier.

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Brian Mackey: And apparently she was — uh, just, just to remind people — she was one of the people whose sentence was commuted. Uh, she was transferred to home confinement during the pandemic, and I guess her sentence was commuted in December by President Biden.

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Kelly Richmond Pope: That is very true. And you know, what's really interesting — when that happened, um, because I've stuck with this story since I started working on the documentary and, um, I remember when she was released, um, under the COVID protocol, under the compassion release program. I remember when that happened and I was really surprised that that happened then. And when the sentence was commuted, that was just like the second blow, but not the first blow. I think the first one was the gut blow for me. And then when she was released, when it was commuted, I was like, yeah, OK. I'm, I'm not surprised that happened.

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Brian Mackey: All right, so maybe we need for the rest of our conversation to sort of establish some basics here. And maybe we can start with a working definition of, of exactly what is fraud.

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Kelly Richmond Pope: Hm, fraud is the, um, intentional, um, stealing of something that doesn't belong to you. Let's keep it very, very simple. We won't use — I'm not a lawyer, so I won't use the legal definition — but taking something that doesn't belong to you that you didn't have permission to take. And, um, so we can keep it that simple, and I like the simplicity of that definition because stealing time, um, from your employer that doesn't belong to you — all, there's a lot of things that fall under that umbrella.

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Brian Mackey: Watching those SNL clips on YouTube during the workday —

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Kelly Richmond Pope: During the workday, that's right. That's — I mean, you know what, that's called expense fraud. You know, that's fraud. It is.

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Brian Mackey: What about, uh, getting that extra handbag, uh, that you might have ordered, uh —

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Kelly Richmond Pope: Yes. Getting an item that you did not pay for is fraud.

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Brian Mackey: So talk, talk to me about the moral dilemma of that, right? Because this, this could happen to anybody. So, I mean, in that, in that definition of fraud, it's not just the, the Rita Cruwells and the Bernie Madoffs and, and the people like that. It's, uh, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say on air whether I've, uh, you know, watched a YouTube video and then, you know, for work, which we do a lot, right? We're following the news and then maybe I get recommended another one and click on that, and oops, didn't clock out for that time.

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Kelly Richmond Pope: Right. Yeah, you know, one of the things that I wanted to do with ["Fool Me Once"] was really open the world to fraud, to let everyone know that it's not them, it's us, it's all of us. All of us can, um, fall victim to a scheme, but we also can engage in one willingly or unwillingly. It can happen to any of us. And that's what I want people to really understand — that, um, any one of us can commit a fraud.

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Brian Mackey: Well, and you talk in the book about how you got swept up in some fraud yourself, albeit on a smaller scale compared to some of the other stories you tell. Can you talk us through that experience?

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Kelly Richmond Pope: Well, um, are you talking about my handbag story?

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Brian Mackey: Um, well, yeah, so I mean, there, there's uh, not, not that one. I'm trying to think of the, uh, the details here.

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Kelly Richmond Pope: Um, because you said I got swept up into some frauds. I'm like, OK, what do you —

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Brian Mackey: Maybe that's — let's say the IRS, the, uh, the IRS. Yes, yeah, so —

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Kelly Richmond Pope: I, so just, just for those that are listening, I got swept up in being victimized. Yes.

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Brian Mackey: Yes, yes, yes, OK. Fair, very fair [distinction]. I can see, I can see now.

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Kelly Richmond Pope: So that's — I'm like, what did I do? But, OK, so in —

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Brian Mackey: In case anyone's listening, God knows in this era, yes.

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Kelly Richmond Pope: Yes, so, um, IRS — um, the IRS one day called me, and I'm — if you could see me, you would see me doing air quotes around "the IRS" — because I, what I thought was a call from the IRS, which again was my first pink flag because the IRS doesn't call you. But when I got the phone call, um, saying that you need to make a payment today, I thought to myself, OK, well, I haven't filed yet, so perhaps this could be true. But then I look at my phone and I noticed that it's from a phone number with a similar area code as my phone number. So that, that didn't add up. So I was — I was like, hm, this seems a little bit fishy. And so I didn't think — after talking to them, I didn't think it was the IRS because I could hear that it was a person that was in a room that, um, was in a loud room. You could hear other people in the background talking. Um, the person had a, um, very distinct foreign accent. And not that that could not be a person living within the United States, but it just — between all of the other things, the accent, the loudness of the room, the phone number, it just all didn't add up. So I — I thought that at first I thought it could be real, but then as he started talking, I realized it's probably fake. So then I just said, you know, I'm gonna have some fun with this now because I really think this is a fraudulent call now. So, um, I played along and, um, the person on the other end said, well, if you give us your credit card number or your bank information, we can settle this right now. And I said, you're right, you think I'm going to really do that. But anyhow, so I — while I was having this conversation, I sent a text to one of my friends and said, I want you to join the call and tell them you're my attorney. And so, um, I told the person to hold on — the IRS agent, uh, the — said, "Please hold on," quote unquote. And so my friend joins and she, uh, says, you know, I, um, I'm an attorney. I'm, I'm Professor Pope's attorney. I have a couple of questions for you. And you could tell the person started getting really, really nervous. And, um, you know, before my friend joined, they said if you don't make this payment, um, we will send officers to arrest you immediately. And I said, come on now, I mean, this is just a mess. But what, what's really interesting is because my, um, radars went off, I knew — it was after a while, after a while, I knew it was a scam. But think about somebody that might be in their late 60s or 70s or even 80s that got that call. They might not know that and might be very willing to open up, give their checking account, give their credit card number, and boom, they've been defrauded. So it's so easy to happen because it can sound and feel so real. And we want to often be very compliant to the laws and, and any rules. So if someone says you owed something that you didn't pay, you're more likely to doubt yourself first than to say I did pay it. So the — I almost fell victim to a scam, but I ended up, of course, I didn't, but I almost did, I almost did.

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Brian Mackey: Why is it — why do we say, and you often hear this, right — that it's an age thing, that people who are older are more susceptible. Is this just about technological literacy or is there something else going on there?

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Kelly Richmond Pope: I think, um, as we age — and I'm, I'm in the era of aging too — um, we tend to doubt ourselves more. So your memory goes away a little. You, you don't feel as spry as you might have felt when you were in your 20s or 30s. So you're more likely, I think, to say, I probably did something wrong before [thinking] something else is wrong. So I think the, um, elderly community is a target: one, because they tend to doubt themselves quicker; um, they also tend to have more resources, so they've saved up, they're not working anymore, they have more, more money available than, say, someone, um, that's in their 20s or 30s. And, um, oftentimes if they are living on their own, they may be too prideful to tell someone if there is a mistake that's been made. So they are a really, really easy target. But I think the forgetfulness of how we, um, how we become as we age is one of the key reasons why I think they're such a, a, a good target for a scammer.

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Brian Mackey: You know, so many of us have witnessed what you might call everyday fraud, right? Work-from-home scams, the callers, you know, saying you need to send $2,000 in Google Play gift cards to take care of your IRS debt or whatever. Um, but a lot of what you focus on in the book is fraud at a much larger scale — hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars. What are some of the common threads you find in how people are able to pull off this sort of thing?

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Kelly Richmond Pope: So one of the things I wanted to do, um, with my book is really organize it from the perspective of perpetrators, victims and whistleblowers. And so what I wanted to do with the perpetrators was really break them into different categories. You can be an accidental perpetrator, you can be a, um, intentional perpetrator, [an] accidental perpetrator, or a righteous perpetrator. And so I've categorized those because depending on what category you fall in, [it] really impacts the type of organization that you're in. So take for example an intentional perpetrator — they can be in really any size organization, small, medium or large, because they are a person that notices that there are weaknesses within an organization and they figure out a way that they can exploit those for personal gain. And that could be anybody at really any level.

So, but compare that to the righteous perpetrator. Typically, someone that I categorize at the righteous perpetrator level is someone that is very senior in an organization because what they do is they take their power and their privilege within that organization and they extend it to somebody else to help someone from the outside. So that typically would require somebody to be somebody to be pretty senior within the organization, or even one of the rainmakers in the organization.

And so the accidental perpetrator — that person is like your middle-level, um, employee, middle-level manager who finds themselves following the quote-unquote boss's orders, and following those orders without doing your proper due diligence could land you into a fraudulent situation. So I wanted to introduce those categories because the themes or the commonalities between the cases that I study — not only write about but use in my classes with my students — they tend to fall in those categories. Because if it's a larger organization, typically when you see a righteous perpetrator committing some type of crime, it is a place where people have entrusted a leader, entrusted a senior person. The person doesn't feel like the law — that the rules that have been put in place even apply to them — and so they are sort of above the law. Well, that takes somebody that has seniority within an organization to even feel that way. So, um, the commonalities for me really depend on the type of story that it is, or the type of case that it is.

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Brian Mackey: So, so that's the how. What are, what are some of the reasons why people do it? Is it really about the money? Is it about something else?

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Kelly Richmond Pope: You know, it's, it's interesting you ask that because one of the things that I try to do, um, in my classes and even in trainings that I do is I try to stay away from con men or con people type stories because I find that the con man kind of person [does] it for the thrill of the game. And, and that's a little bit harder to dissect. Um, I try not to use those kinds of stories. I try to use more of the, the things that, um, can happen to just anybody on an, on an any-day basis.

So, um, take for example, one of the stories out of my book, um — her name is Kayla and Kayla was an attorney, and um, she was a very senior-level partner with a law firm. And what happened with Kayla is she saw an opportunity to, um, help her husband because her law firm was looking for vendors to do some of the litigation support work. And so she said to her spouse, you know, if you were to set up a company, you could probably be one of our preferred vendors. And, um, there was no anti-nepotism policy within [her] law firm, so her husband set up a company and, and, and became one of the vendors of her law firm. Well, fast forward a year ahead, and he started submitting claims, um, for work that had not been done yet. Now, the firm had instituted a policy where they were trying to prepay some of the invoices, um, so they could spend up some of the budget that they had left. So what ended up happening is her company started paying some of the invoices that her husband had submitted and he hadn't done the work, and he never did the work. And so when she realized that the work had not been done, she found herself in an ethical dilemma: do I go and tell my partners, um, that this is the situation that I've created? Or do I try to fix it on my own? And so she tried to fix it on her own and [it] didn't get fixed, and so they ended up being, um, indicted for, uh, almost a little over $8 million embezzlement as a result of, um, her husband submitting these invoices and, um, never doing the work for them.

So, you know, she found herself, um, in a really bad situation that just kept showing itself up over and over and over again, which is how she got to the $8 million level of this theft. So I think when I think about Kayla's case, she was somebody that was the rainmaker in the organization. She was very senior. Everybody trusted her. No one suspected [her] ever to do anything wrong, and yet she found herself in that situation. So it really, um — I think the common thread here is trust. You know, we all trust somebody, something, some process. And when we tend to put all of our trust in anything, it allows us to not use the, um, internal control procedures or processes that help us, uh, protect ourselves and our organizations.

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Brian Mackey: Interesting you talk about that because I, I talk with a lot of political people, political scientists, public office holders. And one of the recurring things we talk about is the lack of trust in America these days, sort of in institutions, in government, in your fellow Americans, sort of writ large. But we do still often have this trust for our coworkers, perhaps unearned, right? And you write about even one of your own former coworkers at, at DePaul, uh, where an episode like this happened. How, how do you sort of reconcile that individual trust with the bigger story of declining trust in America we've seen?

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Kelly Richmond Pope: You know, I, I think that it's OK to trust people, but do your due diligence. Do both. You can do both. You don't have to do one or the other. So you can do both. So if you were to — if a check came in your mailbox today with your name on it, you're not just going to take it to the bank and cash it. You're going to ask questions: who's the sender? Is this legitimate? Do the due diligence process that makes you not susceptible to fraud. You don't want to just take that check from an unknown sender and deposit it into your account and then be contacted by the bank to find out that that was a fraudulent check and now your account is flagged. I mean, you, you — we all need to do the appropriate due diligence and we can still trust. There's nothing wrong with doing both of them at the same time.

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Brian Mackey: Trying to think — what was that company. Didn't — wasn't there a company that Citibank accidentally sent them like $800 million a few years ago? OK, OK. Uh, you know, one of the things you also touch on in this book is the idea that fraud, you know, when we do experience it, it can really have a, a tangible effect on our bodies and health. Especially even when we're doing the fraud ourselves. Say more about that.

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Kelly Richmond Pope: Well, you know, lying is very stressful. And, um, if you really think about how difficult it is to maintain a financial fraud, it's hard. I mean, so I'm an accounting professor — you said it in the intro — so I've got to put a little accounting in here. One of the things, if you have ever taken an accounting class, one thing that you learned was the accounting equation, which is assets equals liabilities plus stockholders' equity. And what, what we know about financial statements — or what we know about the accounting equation — is that it must balance. So if you take something off the left side, if you take something from the asset side, which could be cash, you then have to balance that out with something on the right side, which [is] our liabilities and our equity. So when you think about when you're stealing from an organization, you first have to have access to manipulate the system so that your books or those financial statements will ultimately balance. That is extremely stressful. I mean, if you've ever told a lie, one of the things that you have to keep up with is who you told the lie to, what the lie was, and then all the pieces in the story that have to make the lie legitimate. That can be stressful and very taxing on anyone's body.

Um, one of the very first interviews I did — with a woman by the name of Diane Kitani — one of the things that she talks about, and she's in my intentional perpetrator chapter [of the] book, one of the things that she talks about is how her health declined during her fraud because she was lying so much. She was manipulating so many people around her that it ended up taking a toll on her health. So I think that there's two things at play here: it's the stress of it, and it's the lying — the stress that the lying creates. It's not easy on us because I don't think naturally that's our disposition to just make up stories and make up entries and make up fraudulent checks and make the whole thing just balance. That's not natural. So I think it just takes a toll on us.

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Brian Mackey: Does it matter if the person is a malignant narcissist? I mean, are there people who actually maybe don't experience it the way others do, and they enjoy it?

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Kelly Richmond Pope: That's an interesting point, and I do think that there are people that do have, um, psychological disorders that allow them not to feel that. So we're not talking about our sociopaths of the world because I think that they don't respond in the way that many of us do. But, you know, if, if we don't take pride — most of us don't take pride in figuring out a way to steal $1,000 from you. But, you know, we don't take pride in that, but there are people that are not moved by that. And so again, what I try to do when I'm, when I'm bringing a case to class or a case to training, I try to find the cases that are relatable. Um, a case that we just talked about in my, um, intro to fraud class at DePaul — we talked about the Charlie Jarvis case. And so you might have seen this in the news. Charlie Jarvis was the founder of a company by the name of Frank, and Frank was trying to make the financial aid process for students, um, a little — a lot smoother. And she ended up selling her company for millions — hundreds of millions of dollars — to JP Morgan. And what she did — one of the reasons why she was able to sell it for such a, for such a large amount of money is she said that her user base was so high. Don't quote me here, um, I believe she said her user base was 3 million users and she might have had 300,000. OK. So there was a huge discrepancy as to what she told the buyer, which was JP Morgan, versus what she actually had. And so after JP Morgan acquired her company and they started sending out emails to that customer base that they thought they acquired, those emails were either unopened or they bounced back, and JP Morgan started asking questions. Well, what, what, uh, Charlie Jarvis and her chief operating officer did is they used an algorithm to generate fraudulent emails. Now, you would think that is a really, really dumb crime because if you send out an email and it never gets opened or it bounces back, of course, that's a huge red flag immediately. So I try to use cases like that where people just make silly mistakes that we can learn from, as opposed to the person that, um, takes pride or doesn't have any feeling about the hurt or harm that they're causing people, because I don't think that people can relate to that type of behavior in the way that they can relate to the mistakes that a Charlie Jarvis made.

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Reginald Hardwick: From Illinois Soul, this is Dialogue. I'm Reginald Hardwick, news and public affairs director at Illinois Public Media. Dialogue is an exchange about culture straight from the soul. Fraud is everywhere in society and it can be extremely costly. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that more than $5 trillion a year is lost to fraud around the world, and for those hit by it, the aftermath can be painful. Today we're sharing a conversation from Illinois Public Media's weekday talk program, The 21st Show. Host Brian Mackey talked with Kelly Richmond Pope, a Chicago-based professor at DePaul University, where she's a forensic accountant. She's also the author of a book, "Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories and Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry." Brian asked Pope about the role that AI and cryptocurrency play in scams.

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Brian Mackey: And I want to get to some points raised by our listeners. Uh, from our texting group, we'll start there. Brandy in Urbana texted to say, "As a bank employee, I see people fall victim to fraud frequently. Some people are particularly vulnerable, and those are the most common targets I see. I think right now the proliferation of AI into that space is even more concerning. AI voice is so advanced, it can really sound like an actual person, which might expand the pool of who might be vulnerable to certain scams. As a society, I think we should talk more openly about fraud. People are embarrassed to admit they've been scammed. So we should work to break that down to encourage them to report," end quote. Thanks for that message, Brandy. Uh, Kelly, there's really two points I want to get to here. One is what Brandy mentioned about AI. You came out with this book in March of 2023, just a few months after OpenAI released its first sort of public version of ChatGPT. How has AI changed the way fraud works?

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Kelly Richmond Pope: Wow, I tell you, um. AI is the fraudster's dream because, um, as Brandy mentioned, um, the deep fakes of, um, of how you can disguise — how someone could sound like me. You might not even be talking to me. This might be AI Kelly for all you know. You could probably find my voice and answer a question and it [would] sound just like me. And so it's, it's really made, um, I think fraud creation quicker and fraud detection better. So we have to — I think we can use the tools to help us, but it also — it, it — we have these tools now that make it so much easier to create fraud. So it's this balance because as it's being created faster, the tools will help us detect it better. So maybe it's a wash.

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Brian Mackey: I also want to bring up something else Brandy mentioned, which is this idea that we should talk more openly about fraud. How do we navigate the obstacles around doing that?

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Kelly Richmond Pope: You know, I think, um, you know, fraud is that dirty F word. You know, it's something that people don't want to share that they were the victim of. They definitely don't want to share if they were the orchestrators of it, and they often are, um, demonized or humiliated if they're the whistleblower of it. So we, it's, it's, it's been a very hard topic to talk about because of all of the negative connotations around everybody with it. And so I think we have to change the narrative around a few of those variables. So if you think about, um, the perpetrator — so the perpetrator is going to have a negative connotation just by the nature of them being the perpetrator. But the victim — the victims experience a level of shame that they are not going to [openly] share, especially in the area of romance scams. If a person has been defrauded that way, the likelihood of them wanting to share that on a public forum is a little bit different.

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Brian Mackey: One of the other things we also heard from some listeners about is this idea of cryptocurr[ency]. John in Rockford asks, um, how does your guest feel about the legitimacy of cryptocurrency? In my view, it's a modern version of the old Dutch tulip bulb mania. Um, Kelly, this comes up at the tail end of your book. I don't, you know, I don't know how much has really changed in the last two years in terms of this stuff. What do you think of, uh, crypto?

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Kelly Richmond Pope: So, um, I have, um, a colleague, um, Professor Lamont Black — I don't know if he's listening — he is my cryptocurrency king here at DePaul University. But I'll tell you this, I don't understand it, and I, I mean, I understand it in theory, but I don't understand any type of unregulated market that deals with money. And so, um, it's, it's an industry that I think has, has developed with mystery around it, which makes me feel uncomfortable. And so, um, I know that there have been some big winners with Bitcoin, and if you were one of the early people that, you know, you're probably very — you got out and got your money. But to me, I just don't understand that it's this, it's this, um, digital currency that I still have to convert into, into money to actually live off of. And so the unregulated, um, function of, of cryptocurrency just makes me uncomfortable. And, um, I was — um, at the end of my book, I talk about being in this movie, um, called "The Highest of Stakes" about, uh, this gentleman by the name of Richard Hart, who at that time developed one of the fastest appreciating, um, stable coins, um, called Hx. I don't know where [Hex] is today, but I do know that there are a lot of money — a lot of people that lost a lot of money investing in [Hex]. And so I just, um, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a skeptic when it comes to cryptocurrency. So that, that's my, that's my feeling on it.

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Brian Mackey: You were mentioning whistleblowers before the break, and that's a big part of the book. Um, talk to me about, about that and the importance of it and, you know, what, what motivates people to actually, to, to, to drop a dime on that. Yeah.

[00:34:24]
Kelly Richmond Pope: You know, what we were talking about before the break was how do we change this narrative so we can have more positive conversations around fraud and talk about it more openly. And what we were saying was the perpetrators, of course, have a negative connotation. The victims, of course, are shamed and so they then, they take on a negative connotation. But then whistleblowers — now whistleblowers should actually be the, the shining light, our heroes in these situations. But yet, we don't feel that way about somebody that is willing to come forward with truthful information that we all should know but don't know. And so I, um, did a TED Talk, uh, years back, um, entitled "How Whistleblowers Shape History." And, um, it, you know, it lives on the TED Talk [website] now. And, um, but the original title of my TED Talk was "Why Do We Hate Whistleblowers?" And that was my question as to why do we hate a person that is willing to put their bravery out there and, and, and blow the whistle or share some information that we don't know. Why would we, why would we, um, ridicule that person? Why would we call them a snitch? Why do we do that?

So, you know, I think, um, some of the bravest people that I have met have really been the whistleblowers. So when I think about the people that I often interview — so it's the perpetrators, the victims, and the whistleblowers — I think the whistleblowers are the ones that I often leave my interviews with, with this kind of, um, feeling of wow, I wonder, do I have the bravery and the courage that they have? Because they're often taking on an issue or a topic and oftentimes destroying their lives to do it, but they have this sense of, um, right and wrong that maybe all of us need to have. But they're the ones willing to come forward with it. But yet it's a really, really, really tough road for them. So we need to change the narrative around somebody that's willing to share information to save us. We need to change that.

[00:36:44]
Brian Mackey: One of the other things I wanted to ask you about is sort of like prac[tical] — practical applications, right? One of the things you talk about in the book is minding your business. You mean that in a different way than how we tend to talk about that.

[00:36:56]
Kelly Richmond Pope: Yeah, I do. You know, it's funny, um, that was almost one of the titles of the book, "Minding Your Business," um, but we went with ["Fool Me Once"], but you know, mind your business means to pay attention to what is actually happening in your business. Pay attention to it, you know, um, we have to, we have to, because no one cares more about your money than you do. And you have to remember that. So you need to give the perception that you care, and that perception can be a low-cost internal control procedure, which is opening the mail. And I didn't say read the mail, I said open the mail. Let your accountant or let your bookkeeper within your organization know that you are paying attention, because what often happens is we will outsource the person that manages and oversees our money. And when we outsource it, we just pay attention to the end result, but we don't pay attention to the process. We're not willing to learn the process, and that's what makes us vulnerable. And we don't want that to happen, which is why I say everybody needs to take an accounting class. That's like a life skill that everybody needs to have.

[00:38:11]
Brian Mackey: You know, what about minding other people's business? I had this experience. I'm gonna keep the details intentionally vague 'cause I, I might have misinterpreted it, as we'll hear. But I, I was in a business, I've been there a number of times, I'm, you know, reasonably friendly with the owner. I heard them on the phone with somebody who had a, a, a foreign accent, and it seemed that this person's accounts were locked up based on the context. And this conversation kept going on and on — it was on speakerphone, so I was overhearing it. But I kind of felt like, should I say something? Is this, is there something nefarious going on? Is, you know, was, is this person being subject to ransomware or something like that? I ended up not saying anything. I still wonder if I, I did the right thing there. How do you advise people when they're, you know, when you suspect somebody maybe — you know, and maybe not. Maybe I would have embarrassed myself in that case. But how would you think about that?

[00:39:01]
Kelly Richmond Pope: Yeah, I think, um, if I am in your, if I am in your universe, I'm near you, um, I'm talking to you, I'm having lunch with you — if I'm close enough to overhear or be a part of your life, then I feel obligated to say something if I see something wrong. And if I'm going to lose a friend over it, but I saved you from something, I'm willing to do that. Because I feel like being an accountant, being a CPA, understanding auditing, understanding, uh, enough tax to be dangerous — I don't know that everybody has that type of knowledge. So if you hear something, then I think it's your obligation to say something because fraud is one of those things that, um, it's upon us to really stop it. You know, you, you quoted the ACFE research in our open today. And one of the things that the ACFE historically has shown us over the past 10 years with their research is whistleblower whistleblowing — or whistleblowers — are the No. 1 [way] that frauds are [detected], not from, um, internal auditors, not from external auditors, not even from, um, any kind of technology. It's from people. And so if we are not willing to be accountable to each other and say something if we see something, then I think, you know, it's just perpetuating that fraud cycle. And that fraud cycle perpetuating could be — maybe it's not me, but maybe it's my brother, maybe it's one of my children, maybe it's my grandmother. So you know, we have to protect each other. That's all we have.

[00:40:41]
Brian Mackey: Do you think we're in an era where fraud is being — I don't wanna, I don't know if encouraged is the right term — but I mean, you think about, you know, inspectors general have been dismissed from the federal government. These are the people that whistleblowers would, would theoretically go to. Um, we've seen, you know, foreign governments giving our president a gift of a private jet, which apparently he gets to keep after leaving office. You know, there's, there's these meme coins, bitcoins, even. I, I was reading where Barron Trump, 19-year-old sophomore at NYU, is reportedly worth $150 million thanks to the family's crypto business. Are we in an era where — and I should say, prosecutions are being, you know, taken away from white-collar crimes and put more on immigration enforcement — um, so I mean, are we in an era where, you know, fraud is, is gonna be on the rise? How do you think of that?

[00:41:30]
Kelly Richmond Pope: You know, it's a very interesting question. Um, I think we are in an era where for some people they can engage in fraud in, in the, in the open [of] day and not be prosecuted. For some people. But for the masses, for most of us, if you commit insurance fraud, tax fraud, Ponzi schemes, you're going to jail. And so I think that we have to — the best way for us to navigate what we're seeing is recognize that there is a difference between how some people are able to navigate and operate and how others cannot. And there's more of us in the cannot commit fraud category than the ones that are going to be able to commit it. So, it's a very, very, very, um, dangerous time that we're living in because we have to realize that we, the everyday working person, can and probably will go to jail if there's a prosecutor that can do the case because they hadn't gotten fired yet. But you know, those, those protections typically don't apply to us and we have to remember that. So don't go out and engage in insurance fraud. Don't go out and engage in tax fraud because the likelihood is that you will get caught, and your defense can't be, well, um, the, the powers that be did it, so I can do it too. That's not going to be a defense for you.

[00:42:59]
Reginald Hardwick: You're listening to Dialogue from Illinois Soul. I'm Reginald Hardwick. Today, we shared a conversation about scams and schemes from The 21st Show with Kelly Richmond Pope, a forensic accountant and a professor at DePaul University. Her book is called "Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories and Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry." That's our program for today. The 21st Show program on fraud was produced by Christine Hatfield and hosted by Brian Mackey. Today's show was edited and produced by Curtis Beasley the Fourth. Dialogue and Illinois Soul are part of Illinois Public Media, a service of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I'm Reginald Hardwick. We'll talk with you again next time.