Does the glass ceiling promote pink collar crime?
What conditions encourage our "evil twin" to come out from the shadows?
How do we balance trust against vigilance without toxifying the workplace?
These and other contemporary challenges are addressed when Pink Collar Crime expert Kelly Paxton joins The Rabbi and the Shrink.
Does the glass ceiling promote pink collar crime?
What conditions encourage our "evil twin" to come out from the shadows?
How do we balance trust against vigilance without toxifying the workplace?
These and other contemporary challenges are addressed when Pink Collar Crime expert Kelly Paxton joins The Rabbi and the Shrink.
Welcome to the Rabbi and the Shrink. This is Dr. Margarita Gurri, the shrink. And this is everyone's favorite rabbi, at least mine...
Yonason Goldson:Yonason Goldson
Margarita Gurri:the good Rabbi has once again found for us a brilliant woman of ethics. Her name is Kelly Paxton. Welcome, Kelly.
Kelly Paxton:Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be on this.
Margarita Gurri:Well, we are too and you are known as the pink collar crime. And you are wearing a collared shirt, which is perfect. I wore my pink the best I have. And we've been teasing the rabbi about getting a pink tie. So we'll have to see I have a I have a feeling that might be one of my gifts for you in the future. Change comes slowly. Yes, well, you have 3000 years to wear Bravo. So Kelly Paxton is an interesting individual. She started out doing US Customs fraud work, and worked in a sheriff's office for fraud enforcement. So she's coming at this world really knowing it literally from the bottom up, where they were catching the bad guys. And then suddenly now she's got this podcast great women in fraud. She's got a book that has to do with embezzlement, how to prevent, detect and investigate pink collar crime. If you think about her, she's a Certified Fraud Examiner, which quite frankly, I didn't know those existed. I met you. I've known about auditors and audits and all that because my friend Julie is an auditor, she's with auditing Alliance. And on top of it, being a professional speaker, you're out private investigator, which is way cool. So please tell us how did you get from this embezzlement and customs to this pink collar crime? Where all of your skills and interest of Milgram
Unknown:Well, what's really interesting is I say my career has been always about money. So I started in finance, how people invest, save and invest. And we got a client. That was kinky. And this was back before the anti money laundering Know Your Customer rules. But we still knew he was hinky. And one day we got a call from a US customs agent. And she asked Do you know Alan, and all public information? And I was young, I get old. I was like, Oh, is that what we're calling them today? And she's like, Oh, well, we might be sending a subpoena down. And that was kind of a mistake on her part. And she still hired me. But um, you would never call a branch office of a brokerage firm, you have to call the headquarters because the branch office, they're making money off the balance. And so if she wouldn't call the main office, they would have frozen the account. So long story short, Alan got caught for wire fraud. And I was just really curious. And so I called her up. My boyfriend then became husband, so just call her. I called her up. And a year later, I'm in Florida. Well, Georgia, and I'm shooting guns. I'd never never touched a gun before. They hired me for my financial background. And so I primarily did money laundering cases, but I arrested bad guys, money launderers, drug dealers, pedophiles. My highlight of my career, however, at US Customs was I got a woman attorney disbarred and sent to prison, but most importantly, the money she stole, I was able to get returned to the victim. So I consider that a win win. Well, we just acted really, really quickly. And we were able to stop the money from leaving the country because it was gonna go out of the country. Um, so yeah, and then, you know, longer story shorter, went to the middle of the country, no border, so couldn't work for customs. We came back to Oregon. Eventually, I started working at a sheriff's office. And that's when the idea of crime really changed for me because I was there fraud analyst and we were working embezzlement cases on Main Street. And all of a sudden one day I realized all my videos are all my suspects except for one were women and I Googled women embezzlers and this term pink collar crime came out now. This has shifted to I am the fraud hashtag queen. Hashtag its position, not gender. It is the one crime women Excel act. Why? Because they're in low to medium level. positions in the workplace. They know every dollar that goes into the business, every dollar that goes out. And hashtag Never underestimate a woman is the truth. These Masters of the Universe. These business owners are like, Oh, Betty, she's so sweet. She'd never do anything like that. And that's when crime changed for me we don't relate to, you know, Bernie Madoff, we don't relate to Enron, we relate to our kids soccer club getting embezzled, the PTA, the water district, things like that. That's crime on Main Street.
Yonason Goldson:I like to ask question is is it do you? Do you see a correlation? I mean, this is what I drew out of your words. That is it that women, because they are in positions that may not allow them to make the kinds of contributions they could be should be are capable of, they feel undervalued. And that contributes to a proclivity to start looking for angles, put it nicely.
Unknown:So there's the fraud triangle. It is opportunity, pressure and rationalization. For a long time, women didn't have opportunity. They weren't in the workforce. In the mid 70s, women started getting into the workforce, and there's a criminologist and she's elderly. And Ill I hear Dr. Freda Adler, and she said women will steal, because they now have the opportunity. She got pushed back for three years, Barbara Walters interviewed her she was on The Tonight Show to tell the truth. And everyone said, you are taking away from women's the women's movement, she goes no, I'm not I'm what I'm bringing to bear is 4% of the criminal justice budget is only for women, women's programs, women are now going to get in the workforce. And now they will have the opportunity to steal. And you know what the the crime statistics have borne this out. So I do there, how there was a podcast I just listened to and I can't remember what it is. And it's it was with Angela Duckworth, and I can't remember who interviewed her. But it was about women basically being incredibly unhappy right now, because of all the pressures and COVID and things like that. And so this kind of ties into your work, or to your question, Rabbi is that? Yeah, I mean, I think they get, they can get a little bitter when they're mistreated. And they know they can do more. But you know what, some of them don't want to some don't aspire to the C suite. They just want to punch in and punch out. But then they see what the C suite or higher ups are doing. And maybe they're like, I want a little piece of that.
Margarita Gurri:Well look at nine to five. Oh, I
Unknown:know. Oh my gosh, oh, I play that song, Dolly Parton song at the beginning of my in person presentations. You know what's fascinating. Talk about Never underestimate a woman, Dolly Parton. Jane Fonda came to Dolly. And whenever in the movie, and Dolly said, I will only do the movie if I get to write the song because that is one of her best selling songs. So don't underestimate dolly and look at what she's done recently. Like, you know, she has a joke about I spend so much money to look cheap. Yeah, I love that. And they underestimated those three women and nine to five Oh absolutely.
Margarita Gurri:I absolutely love that and and and yet my father when he was watching that I killed anybody look at how horrible that is. They're encouraging women to be violent and criminals and that we are that daddy come on. I'm
Yonason Goldson:so brilliant movie. And I think one of my favorite element there is the Jane Fonda character who is this unique mousy has been just sort of stepped on and pushed down her whole life. And in her fantasy, you know, she's this swashbuckling, you know, carrying a shotgun. We all have these different personas within us that are often looking for opportunities to come out. And if we're, if we're not appreciated, if if we're not respected, if we're not given the opportunity to contribute according to our talents, then those personalities are going to come out in ways that maybe they shouldn't.
Margarita Gurri:So, Duckworth got pushback. How about you? Are you getting criticized for pointing out the women? I think women get touchy about this with the women's movement and on what's your reaction?
Unknown:If someone complains about my presentation, like I've had some people reach out to me and say, we'd like to have you come and then all of a sudden, you know, a board member will say, Oh, I don't She's picking on women. And I'm like, let's let's slow down. You know, it's all about its position, not gender. 90% of bookkeepers in this country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics are women. So no. And you know, a lot of people I say I have a very strange sense of fraud. humor. I don't ever like to punch down, and I don't punch down. But the things it is women, if you're going to steal, steal like a man, men steal more money, women steal more often.
Margarita Gurri:There you go, and you teach courses on that.
Unknown:Yep, yep. And when I get when I explain it to people they understand, because again, so we have the fraud, triangle opportunity, pressure and rationalization. Most people think it's easiest to control for opportunity. So internal controls, you know, to sigma signatures on checks, well, okay, the number one way to steal is forged or unauthorized checks. So I just had someone last week in a presentation say, Well, if you can forge one signature, you can forge too. So you know, that's not really control. The thing is, is the rationalization, you could pay an administrative assistant a million dollars a year. But if he or she has a $2 million a year lifestyle, they will still find a way to rationalize the fast. So we can't control that you have all people, you know, they're good doctor, you know how people can rationalize behavior? Oh, my gosh, they called me in over the weekend, or they sent me on a business. Well, this is an example I worked for a large corporation, you someone would get sent on a business trip for two weeks, they'd have to board their dog or pay for extra daycare, what you don't get, you don't get that covered in your expense report. So then it's like, you know, in the place that I worked, you didn't need receipts for expenses when I left for under $75. So what if you just tacked on $50 a day for your dog boarding and you just call it something else? Because they made you stay away from the business or from your home for two weeks? That's rationalization. It can happen.
Yonason Goldson:It does happen. And we're really good at it. And we we've talked before about how rational agent rationalization is perhaps the most dangerous enemy of ethics. In fact, we had Ron Qureshi on a few weeks ago. Yeah, he's wonderful. And you know, he cited research that when people perceive unfairness around them, it makes them less ethical. Because if I can't trust others, then why should I be trustworthy?
Unknown:Yep, that's another one of my hashtags. Trust is not an internal control. I go to sleep every night with a Google alert on embezzlement. Yes, I have some very weird dreams. And I read these stories about embezzlement. And they all say we trusted her, we trusted him, he was a part of our family, she was a part of our family. You know, we hire people we know like and trust, we don't hire bad guys. Um, this is another thing is the term white collar crime didn't come out until 1939. And prior to 1939, criminals were icky people, people that were poor people that lived on the wrong side of the tracks, you know, they're wearing baggy pants. They're scary. We cross the street when we see them. And then Edwin Sutherland comes along. And he's like, I'm sorry, you can be rich and steel, like, so that was a that was a really big thing. And then 50 years later, Dr. Kathleen Daly popularizes, the term of pink collar crime that is low to medium level employees, comma, primarily women comma, the steal from the workplace. So you have the umbrella of white collar crime, and that pink collar crime is a subset. Because white collar crime is really it's going to be like, you know, Ponzi schemes, financial statement, fraud, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, things like that. It's big dollars. Pink collar crime is generally smaller dollars, and it's over a longer period of time.
Margarita Gurri:All right, so I have a question. Yes, you and I were talking earlier that when I first started my private practice, in 1983 I hired a woman with six children to that had come highly recommended to do my bookkeeping. I made a huge mistake in my bookkeeping, my own, went through and discover that she stole $5,000 from me. I then now and part of the problem, as I just fired her, I gave her a chance to explain it didn't to show to me how I might have been wrong. Finally, she admitted she just stole it from me. I never reported her. So I'm now part of the problem. You asked me an interesting question. I didn't fire her because she has six kids. I want it and I met them. So I know she has six kids. I wanted him Make sure that the kids were okay. And you asked me an interesting question. Would I have reported her if she was a man? And I said, No, if they had children, which is a terrible thing, Ravana there's my rationalization, right? So I contributed. So how are we all contributing? Besides keeping women in these lower level jobs where they can make their own money? How are we contributing to women being the pink color experts?
Unknown:Well, you know, one of the things I'm going to say is, tone at the top. So you have a business, you have a master of a university, you have some, you know, very successful business, and that just giving a little bit, that woman sees it all. So when they go on a trip and say they take their family to Key West for an and this is a fun fact, three out of five dentists get ripped off. Three, five. Yeah. Uh huh. By that nice woman, I have I had one Betty who stole a million dollars over 10 years. So well, we'll talk about that. But I want to ask, she didn't steal it all in one check. Did she know? It was just a little bit? Did it get a little bit bigger?
Margarita Gurri:Well, I would guess so.
Unknown:So the other thing is, she stole it relatively quickly. That tells me she did it before. Because you didn't teach her on the job. That was not your on the job training was to teach her how to steal. So she probably did it somewhere before I save someone who steals within six months of, you know, their starting position, they probably have stolen somewhere else. That doesn't mean they have a criminal history. Because like you, you just said, you know you did it make you feel better when she confessed to you?
Margarita Gurri:No, because I didn't, you know, I don't expect liars to tell the truth. So I thought that it made it easier for her that she and I to not have a dancer for her to accuse me of something. So in that sense, but it didn't make me feel better about the theft. It made me feel safer in terms of I have found a long time ago that when we catch people, many of them are good at turning it around and making it your fault, and then accuse you. So I was more protective of my reputation. With that. Well, and then this also goes
Unknown:to this was almost 40 years ago, and you talked about it right off the bat. Now, money is replaceable. You obviously are very successful, you're able to replace the money. But that story has followed you the rest of your career hasn't Yes, I
Margarita Gurri:always felt bad that I wasn't it was partly my fault. So when Rob and I talk about this, I did not hold her accountable enough. I just trusted her. And so I do believe at some level, maybe if I caught her early, maybe she wouldn't have done that and still had a job. Maybe not I don't know, I'm Catholic, I'm allowed to get guilty. Okay. And so my thought was that partly it was my responsibility because I did not hold her accountable.
Unknown:I never want a victim shame. And absolutely never want to victim shame because it's, it's your money. It's your business. No one should take advantage of that. And but you, you can see all sorts of stories online. Were on Facebook, a newspaper puts up a story. And the comments are, I can't believe XYZ business was so stupid to let that woman or that man steal. I have an uncle, may he rest in peace. And I saw online that a mutual connection had been ripped off to the tune of $250,000. And my uncle who has never made who had never made more than $250,000 in his life, said to the guy, gee, aren't you smart to have let that happen? And I wanted to post like, well, you're not smart enough to earn it in the first place. So um, but, you know, the guy was very successful. And $250,000 over a couple of years. He it's like, as I say, in the dental office, the fish tank gets a little bigger. You know, they just you're looking at your business because you look at the big picture you do, you're not down in the weeds and they're down in the weeds. And they know when you get when they can, you know, add a new vendor or up their timesheet or something like that, because your genius is in the business and not the running of the business for sure.
Yonason Goldson:When it comes down to the practicalities here Um, I've I've been a solopreneurs. So it's it's a whole different situation. But I think there are applications in our personal lives as well. We want to trust people. We want to let people have the freedom to make the contributions that they can. And certainly the workplace if I find someone assistant comes with good recommendations, referred to me by somebody I trust seems to be up in a board. above board. So what should I be doing? To I want to hand I mean, this is why I'm hiring somebody to hand over control of the things I don't want to be bothered with. How do I not micromanage? How do I not make it seem like I don't trust? How do I trust but verify is the simple way to ask the question.
Unknown:Okay, so you've probably always already heard the term surprise and delight, and most people think it's like surprise and delight your customers, I say it surprise and delight your employees. So if you're bookkeeper or accounts payable, thinks that you only look at checks over $5,000 Every so often. Say, I want to look at this check for $1,000 If you're a smaller business, or say a municipality, and you get audited, and you always get audited in the month of say, October when you mix it up to March, because there's a woman who's still $800,000. And she's thieved, every year through May 31, went cold turkey for all of June and started up again July 1, because she knew the auditors came. The other thing, and you know, these are not expensive deterrence, we're not going to have to go out and like you know, put some heavy duty software on our stuff. We are going to, first off, get your own bank statements, get your own bank statements or download go online. There's a guy Tom Hughes, who was a serial pink color and Besler. So again, its position not gender, he was an outside bookkeeper. And he would his clients would come and they would hand them an envelope. If the envelope was closed with his bank statement. He's like, Oh, Target, I can steal from them. If he goes literally, if the base if the envelope was open. He's like, I'm not gonna steal from them. He didn't know if they pulled the bank statement out or not. But he's like, Well, they opened it. So chances are they probably pulled it out. You must get your mail first. Like you just have to get the your mail first. Another thing is like and you said this early earlier about the woman who stole from you she lived in a lovely house, does the lifestyle match the salary? Or you can also do what I like to call a good friend of mine, Deanna Sullivan gave me this the parking lot audit. Did your bookkeeper show up in a brand new Tesla every six months. I don't know
Margarita Gurri:if she had a beautiful car. But she also said she was a widow of a guy who used to be in finance. So she had her good backstory. She lived in this gorgeous house that looked like a cartoon with you know all the big windows and kind of Victorian so what are the pink flags then? I mean, you're saying that these are the the parking lot audit looking at your banner wouldn't what are the other things to do and the other pink flags?
Unknown:Okay, this one is good for mental health. You must have your make your employees take vacations. Yes, they don't take a vacation. It's they might be hiding something. There's a woman who stole from her dad's own bank in Shelton, Iowa for over 40 years when she was arrested. Her name is Bernice Geiger. When she was arrested, she was exhausted. Why was she exhausted? Because she had two sets of books and she never could take a vacation. So her sort of backstory is she went to prison for five years. She got out and she consulted for the FDIC, the precursor to the FDIC. And she looked at people who didn't take vacations. I had a dentist who had an employee who she figured out was stealing. And we matched the key card so we would see when she was in the office alone, the office manager in six and a half years, she took off one and a half days vacation. Now the dentist's was so sweet. She's like, she's so dedicated. And I'm like, oh dear. No, no, no, no, she is covering up and she fired three receptionists? She said they weren't good, but the other people in the opposite. They were really good. They answered the phone quickly. And I'm like, Ah, they answered the phone quickly. She wanted to answer the phone. Because a patient would say, my cash payment I'm paid for you last month isn't showing up. So they must take vacations and not these micro patients, you know, the younger generation takes two or three days. Now, it needs to be a full week because, I mean, we're all solos, and we do our own work. But if you're in a business, if you're gone for two or three days, you just work a little extra to catch up. But if you're gone for a week to two weeks, someone's got to be at your desk and looking at your stuff. So vacations.
Margarita Gurri:Wow. These days where everyone works remotely? How do we catch them, then?
Unknown:Oh, this goes into a whole other thing. COVID and remote work. Now you guys, I think know this because I've listened to many of your podcast episodes. Behavioral economics and behavioral science. When we have distance from a person, it's easier to steal mentally. It's just like, you know, the cyber criminals that are over in the Eastern Bloc, they don't see their victims if they saw that little old woman that they just stole $10,000 from us. They wouldn't ever go mugger in a parking lot. But will they steal it? You know with the distance. So the Association of Certified Fraud examiner's has done a couple of surveys since COVID happened and the remote work from home they think will increase fraud, because we're not sitting right outside our boss's office. And every time our boss calls us in and says, Hey, Kelly, can you come here a minute, you're like, Oh, God, am I caught? You know? Whereas if you're at home? I don't know. What do you guys think about the whole distance and not seeing a person and how that allows you to better rationalize? Oh, yeah.
Margarita Gurri:And even even with the issue of time theft, even if we're not talking about embezzlement, but just time theft. It is very easy to say you were working when you were not?
Yonason Goldson:Yeah, I actually heard Jason fivers podcast bill for tomorrow. The this idea of of going to a four day week. And they found that they could cut out a lot of the fat, a lot of the excess of the work of the time used up in work. And by being more efficient. And then they discovered the downside, that people didn't feel they were part of a community. They didn't feel a sense of common mission. They didn't feel that they were connected to their co workers. And so while they became very much more efficient, and people had more free time, without compromising efficiency, there was a damage being caused to the culture of the workplace, which I think could certainly feed into some of the kinds of things you've been describing.
Unknown:Absolutely. I mean, it goes to the rationalization part of the fraud triangle. And you know, what's COVID People are, they're kind of expected to respond at all hours while you're home. You know, you're supposed to be home, you're supposed to be working for me. And they see that people are actually working more hours in a day. Because yeah, you might take a break in the middle of the day to go, you know, do something with your kid or whatever. And then they expect you to be answering emails or putting together a PowerPoint presentation at 10 at night. So that goes to rationalization.
Margarita Gurri:It does, I've been seeing a lot of very stressed out groups of CPAs and auditors, and other people because they're working all the time. They want to please they're not setting limits, as the rabbi was saying the office culture is no longer than major press for choice of behavior is more internal. And luckily, many of us who are who are not extroverts, many of us are introverts. We thrive certainly much better. But the extroverts I always want to wear a little armband. It may be a big band aid, you know, some poor extroverts that had a hard time. And I think without resentment, so one of my questions to you was who steals more often introverts or extroverts?
Unknown:Oh, I do not know that. He's trying
Margarita Gurri:to stealing the, you know, the,
Unknown:I'm gonna say in my experience, and this is anecdotally they're more introverts and that's just completely I'm like literally going through my head right now. Um, there's one right now that was an extrovert but there was a marriage issue. I don't I think she became more extroverted because of her husband and his activities sort of things. But I'm, I'm going back to like mentally in my head, and most of them I'm gonna say are more introverted. An interesting thing. This isn't one of my pink flags is an I don't like to gamble. i It's my line in the sand. I had a family member who had issues with gambling and I really don't like it. There's a guy, Christopher Marquet, who did a report on embezzlement. And he said one out of four cases had A gambling ankle. And Betty who stole a million dollars from Dr. E was a raging gambler, the woman who didn't steal for the month of June, raging gambler. So I say gambling is a pain flag. I kind of joke that if I were to hire someone, I, you know, check out their skills, do their background and everything like that. And then at the end, I'd say so go into Vegas this weekend. Do you like Vegas? And if they're like, oh my god, I love Vegas. I was like, yeah, there's the door, you're not away. That's kind of one of my sort of lines in the sand or my soapbox, I'm gonna say. And I was actually in a casino last week with someone that you have had on your show, Joe Ervin. And we have pictures of me in front of slot machines. And then Joe's like, Yo puts 20 bucks in a slot machine. She's like, Kelly just push the button. And I'm like, oh, no, nope, won't even push the button. She made she doubled her money in less than 10 minutes. But she got down and she put 20 bucks in she got down to like five. And then she made 25 And she's like, I'm done. So Joe and I we had a lot of fun being at this casino for an event. And it just you know, casinos are great places for events like conferences. They are maybe it was a little painful for me. But like we have some great pictures of me in front of slot machines going, you know, I would love to see
Margarita Gurri:what are those? That is that is this funny. Doctor, I
Yonason Goldson:love your question about introverts versus extroverts. And I think Kelly might be onto something. Because we live in a society that tends to recognize extroverts and attribute to them more talent, accomplishment ability than they are necessarily entitled to. And if we go back to that sense of feeling diminished or unappreciated or unrecognized as a contributing factor to the rationalization, then it wouldn't surprise me that introverts may make up more of the embezzlement.
Margarita Gurri:Well, we know that people who feel under appreciated are much more likely to misbehave, ethically, whether it's in a marriage, whether it's in the workplace in a community, we know that one of the big red flags is someone feeling under appreciated. superheroes and bad guys, right? There's an under appreciation involved in much of them. There was
Unknown:also I know you guys, I mean, we all have podcasts. And I know Michael Lewis has against the rules. And he wrote liars, poker, The Big Short, he's written a lot of things. He has the best episode this year. And it's about Gladys, and glad they call it L six. So she's six levels down from the top. And it was like they've made this avatar, it's this great, amazing story. But basically Gladys in the basement is underpaid, underappreciated, she knows everything and she can blow it all up. If she wants to, you need to recognize her skills. Like you get a CFO, who, you know, male, female, whatever they sometimes, like they can't even make a journal entry. They don't even give him access to make a journal entry. So they call down to, you know, the accounting department make the journal entry. Like, you know, they don't even have the sort of technical skills or wherewithal to do it. It's it's the lower level people that are, you know, mixing the batter.
Margarita Gurri:What some movies have people have women running the show, even like cat woman, she was just so under underappreciated and abused, you know?
Yonason Goldson:Yeah. And also, you know, when it comes to you, I was thinking the same thing with movies, but about about heist movies. There's one with Michael Caine recently about these three old men. There was one with Queen Latifah. And it's, it always seems to be three people who are are being abused somehow by the system. And they're going to rip off the system. And we watch these movies and we cheer them on.
Unknown:want them to win? The underdog? It's all about the underdog. It's just like 95 they wanted to take it well. What's the guy's name? I can't.
Yonason Goldson:Actor. Yeah,
Unknown:it's in you know what the audience is cheering dolly Jane and Lily Tomlin on there cheering them on, um, because they're treated poorly, you know, so only 15% of all embezzlement cases and it's hard to even prove this, um, get turned into law enforcement.
Margarita Gurri:Mister help, Mr. Hart? Oh, okay. Because I remember thinking he was heartless
Unknown:Sorry. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Okay, this is a fun thing. And now I know Rabbi You do the word for the podcast, but I'm gonna give you a word. Okay. Can I give you a word? Afternoon? Do you know what an acronym is? No. Okay, well, you know, Rabbi, don't you?
Yonason Goldson:Yes. In fact, it was on my list to us one day so we may just so what isn't?
Unknown:So an afternoon is your name says what you do. So now this is a terrible story. It's not terrible and my dad is died four years ago. When my dad died, he was Catholic, but he wanted to be cremated. And so we my sister and I went to the funeral home and I kid you not? The Funeral Home directors name was Bill Burns. There is a there is a woman in North Carolina who just pleaded guilty to a $15 million embezzlement her name Donna steel. Now it's spelled Ste L E. But still, I am not going to hire someone with a name steal.
Margarita Gurri:Oh, that's just funny. Well, Margarita, right. Drug lady have a high school. So the kids the kids all thought it was funny that grownups didn't get it.
Unknown:Well there's a guy his name is Eric Conn. C O N N. He, I think it was a huge Ponzi scheme. And Bernie made off. I'm not investing with someone whose name is made off like, my money. Just so that's the acronym so i Oh, yeah,
Margarita Gurri:you're gonna hire people based on the name, you're gonna have all sorts of troubles.
Unknown:Like, I have a family member who has a business and laughs at me. And she's like, you know, my first accountants name was best Salman. And I'm like, Oh, God, no, no, no, no, no, it's not embezzlement. But still best Salman is pretty close to it. So yeah, yeah. So that's the word for. That's my word. I teach audiences all the time. And they just, they throw ones out. It's really
Yonason Goldson:quite fun. Well, this has nothing to do with our topic. But there's a story it may be apocryphal, but in Israel, a common nickname for for David, is doo doo. And it doesn't raise eyebrows over there at all. But So the story is there was a visiting professor in America, from Israel. And he introduced himself to his class as do do manure. And after a week, he changed it to David manner. But you know, what you were just saying is if we want people to take us seriously, we have to account for these sorts of very superficial impressions that we can we can create. And just be aware that it may not be fair. But it might be reality. Yeah. Yeah.
Margarita Gurri:That's fascinating. All right. So we're getting around the time where we would have normally done the word of the day. I'm, I'm thinking that you deserve a second word of the day. This is what I'm thinking. Yes, please. I think you pack a wallop. So the rabbit is going to do the word date. And then we're going to ask you two questions. What's the next adventure? And we're going to ask some for some final words of wisdom. Rabbi, word of the day, sir.
Yonason Goldson:Well, I hope it's apt.
Margarita Gurri:It always is,
Yonason Goldson:because our first word was, this is a word I've been saving for a while, but I think it fits. The word is cm key. cm key and if you want to spell it, the better look in the show notes. It means sham fighting for exercise or practice, or an argument or conflict with an imaginary opponent. And it reminded me or actually, you reminded me earlier, Kelly, of a biblical story, when King Saul has been instructed by the prophet Samuel to to wipe out the enemies who have been plaguing the Israelites for so long. Based on the understanding that they were committed to the destruction of the nation, and could never be trusted to keep peace. And Saul showed mercy on their king. And he kept him alive. He thought he was doing the right thing. And when Samuel came to to confront him before Samuel could say a word. Saul says, Samuel, I did exactly what you told me Just you did walk over there. So what saw what King Saul did is he he rationalized, he convinced himself to the point where he was absolutely certain he had done the right thing, not only did the right thing but done what he was instructed to do, when the evidence was right in front of him. And if we want to protect ourselves from the force of rationalization, we have to create an imaginary opponent. That's not as we call it, a straw man. an alter ego, we have to be able to pretend, not even pretend, but really to play both sides to argue both sides with integrity with sincerity, or get somebody to do it for us. Because, you know, so often you hear these stories, do you think what were they thinking? And the answer is often not much. If there would have been if they would have gone into someone and said, You know, I'm thinking of doing this? And the answer would have been what? How could you possibly rationalize that? And how can you possibly think that's the right thing to do? So we have to start by being willing to look at both sides to create these arguments in our own minds as the first step to holding ourselves accountable.
Unknown:Absolutely, um, you mentioned something earlier about, I read it in Malcolm Gladwell book talking to strangers, but the truth default theory, we default to the truth. You know, I can't get out of bed in the morning, if I think that everyone's gonna get ripped off all the time. It's kind of like going to the dentist, if you go to the dentist, and the dentist says you need a root canal, are you gonna say prove it, we we have to function in life. And so that's where like, these sort of easy little tweaks like you know, opening your own bank statements, making your employees take vacations, looking out and seeing what kind of car they drive. We, we want to trust people, it's in our nature to trust people, otherwise, the world is going to come to a screeching halt. Like just a screeching halt. But again, stopping and and this goes to, again, behavioral science, system one and system two thinking, the slow thinking, which is more ethical system two, and the fast thinking which is action oriented, you know, system one, and and when you said earlier about, you know, people like action extroverts, I mean, think about, you know, politicians and history's the ones that, you know, people have these enamored views of are the action takers. Are they our best presidents? I don't know about that. The slow thinkers, and better but, but we, we kind of default to action. So yeah, but we have to get up out of bed thinking that not terrible things are gonna happen to us. Mind you, what's the percentage of the population that are like narcissists are psychopaths. It's like, what, two, two to four something like
Margarita Gurri:we're all waiting, I think. I think we're cooking a new batch is what we're doing. And we're converting some people who weren't. Yeah, yeah, they've lost the cultural press of the look or that, or whatever. So I think that we're converting more
Unknown:well, and you know, I'll go now that we're back in person, and I had this amazing event last week. There are 200 people in the room so you know, probably eight of them. narcissist psychopath. And I kind of joke when I do my presentation. If you're a nice narcissist or a psychopath, you might as well just leave because none of this is going to make any sense to you. I'm talking about good people. Keeping with making good choices. So yeah, yeah,
Margarita Gurri:well, my my friend de Bricker always says that narcissists are the only is the only illness where the sicker you are, the better you feel. And they do not understand the narcissist, especially the ones that are more malicious. They just blame someone else they accused which is what I was trying to prevent myself with the bookkeeper. So whether that's interesting, so So I have a question. If we know somebody, personally, who we think has a little pink flag hanging out of their purse or non pink tie rabbi, what would you suggest we do to help them maybe rethink and make a better decision what would be a good approach to help somebody already noticed their behavior, acknowledge it and maybe change it. What a concept.
Unknown:Yeah, you know, that's a really hard, great question. I have a friend whose son is obsessed about money. Just obsessed about money. I can show you rich people who are miserable, I can tell you rich people who are happy. Um, this goes to I don't like coaching or something like that, like, maybe showing that these are good people who've made a bad choice that have gotten caught.
Margarita Gurri:And let's say they haven't gotten caught, let's say we just noticed they're doing something yucky. Rabbi, and I've seen that all the time in, in different national associations, they have Facebook group pages, and you see some behavior that is less than lovely. Yeah, and some of that I think crosses the line. Ethically, maybe it's not embezzling, but it could be embezzling someone's reputation, if we're going to look at it that way. I think there are little things we can do. So, I mean, you're so experienced, what would you say, you know, somebody, maybe this this son that, you know, what could you say to him to maybe help him rethink, and, and revisit his choices of behavior?
Unknown:Well, okay, I love that you said choices, because in the criminal justice world, especially like in jail and probation, you have to own your choice. So in something like that, I think I would, I think I would say, you know, I would show them that money doesn't isn't an end all be all. In that. There's a woman who literally had a Dr. Phil moment she had been stealing and it started actually as a mistake. It started as a mistake. They, the travel agency booked a personal ticket on the corporate credit card. But guess what she did when she came back and realized that she rationalized that they called her on vacation? And she's like, well, you know, they deserved it. They got a lot of my time during vacation. She was getting physically sick. So that's one of these things when you start stealing, as you well know, especially in your practice, they get sick, they get physically sick, because the guilt eats, it eats it eats it does. Yeah. She went home because she thought she was having ulcers. And she saw Dr. Phil, and she went in the next day. And she she told me the boss didn't know she was stealing. She told the boss I've been stealing, it's about 100 grand. Well, it turns out, it was 400 grand, she had a baby in federal prison. So those sorts of stories, I've got so many stories of good people who made a really bad choice. And I would, I think I would start tying those in to it. And now I'm, you know, I love ethics. I love love, love ethics, it's a muscle. We need to use it all the time. And coaching and mentoring and showing examples and things like that. And also this is the other thing is you must be empathetic, that there is something going on that whoever's person's life, you have got to be empathetic, we can not be judgmental. There is a woman who stole $27,000 from her Township, she was a township member for 50 years, her husband got cancer, they stall for food and drugs. I'm not gonna sit in judgment of Maxine. Never will I sit in judgment. I'm so being empathetic being someone that you can they can trust you to help them. So it's empathy is my number one thing as an investigator as a colleague, we must have empathy is that that's a really long answer.
Margarita Gurri:Is there a big push to put people in jail instead of helping them find a way to pay things back and fix this?
Unknown:Well, hashtag no one steals to save the money. They usually spend it like you know, that they don't buy suave shampoo, they buy Aveda shampoo, they don't go to the shore, they go to you know, Key West or you know, the lifestyle just gets more and more. So rarely do they steal to save. So,
Margarita Gurri:yeah, but in terms of paying it back, is there are there any programs that people pay it back instead of just going to jail?
Unknown:Um, you know, this is really interesting. This could be a whole other podcast.
Margarita Gurri:We're ready for you. Well,
Unknown:I was just in Ohio and they show a woman who stole from the municipality $240,000 She was able to give them a check for $200,000 She was able to hire a very good criminal defense attorney, she got probation. There was a woman who stole $40,000 from a school like the PTA and clubs. She got 18 months in prison. Guess what the difference was? Well, it's it's it's equality. One woman is from sort of privileged background, the other woman is African American. And if you Google the city, that it happened that if so, I go around to different parts of the country, and I always specialize or make my slides for that area. And I Googled this area of embezzlement and this story popped up and it was like, Equal Justice Initiative. So how is it that a woman that steals, you know, five times as much as another woman, that woman gets probation and the other woman goes to jail?
Margarita Gurri:I think there's always class and race and cultural and religious issues that, you know, unconscious bias, unconscious bias is huge. And most people don't have a clue how biased they are. They just have no clue.
Unknown:That's what you get, again, my fraud sense of humor. When I'm in a group of people, I'm like, if you decide you're going to embezzle, you might want to look at some sentencing in your state or municipality, because you can smell 20 grand in one state and get nothing and you could steal 20 grand in another state and be sent to prison for 10 years.
Margarita Gurri:You know, it's funny, and we think of embezzlement has people taking money, but so many people file fake lawsuits for sexual harassment or hostile workplace, either because they're malicious, they're malingerers. They're sociopaths, or maybe they're mentally ill. And they get $250,000. I mean, what is the difference there in terms of the mindset of the criminal, and at all? I mean, that's theft.
Unknown:Well, so that goes to the fraud, triangle opportunity, pressure and rationalization. Most people and I'm gonna say those people that do those lawsuits, narcissists,
Margarita Gurri:they, many of them are narcissists. Or playing out sociopaths,
Unknown:right? Yeah, talking about
Yonason Goldson:opportunity. You know, there are so many inequities in the system. And if you, I mean, I know a person. He's he's never held a job in his life. And he supports himself with lawsuits.
Margarita Gurri:Isn't that nice?
Yonason Goldson:And, you know, I don't I don't know the details. I don't know whether there's some justification for it. But there's something so slimy, about that whole approach. That something you said earlier, Kelly, that really, really struck me the time is that women typically embezzle for smaller amounts. And and it just made me think of a one of my favorite lines of literature, and a man for all seasons, when Thomas Moore has been his his protege has betrayed him and testified falsely against him as a heretic. And why did he do it? Because he was being appointed to become the Attorney General of Wales, which is sort of like, you know, lieutenant governor of North Dakota. And Thomas Moore says to him, it profits of man nothing to sell his soul for all the world. But for Wales. If you're going to if you're going to steal gophers, oh, you're really big. Oh, you just you just talked about the guilt eating away at people. If it should eat away at us
Margarita Gurri:that sociopaths don't have that problem. Oh, no, no, no, they're not burden. And narcissists often depends on how sick they are. And if they also have some sort of sociopathy. They they often don't feel that steam.
Yonason Goldson:So we have to protect ourselves from them. But then in for most of us, we have to protect ourselves from ourselves.
Margarita Gurri:There you said it, Rabbi You said it.
Unknown:You put a good person in a bad environment they're getting a bad yeah.
Margarita Gurri:I like to think that my optimism isn't a bias. I think most people do want to do good and and do want to do good. Thinking of your your David in Israel. I think it's easy for people for all of us to misbehave. You know, it's funny. My first teaching job was in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, oh, I taught college there. And most of those gentlemen were really lovely. And when I listened to a lot of their stories, many of them were there from work due to altruism. They were helping someone by doing something for someone hiding the truth, giving faults for feedback, not telling on something? Most of them, not all of them, I would say most of the ones at least the stories they told me, who knows if they're going to tell the sweet young teacher back then the truth, but I, I tend to believe much of it was the truth. And so I have to think, you know, what, what keeps us from these pink flag moments? If we feel our own pigs like do you have? Have you come up with a solution? Let's say the rabbi and I have a pink flag moment, and we're about to steal someone's money. You know? What can we say to each other and to ourselves, when we're paying flagging, we notice it. It's not worth
Unknown:the money. It's just it's, it's it is not worth it. Money is replaceable. You can go drive Uber, you can do you know, what if? Again, this is system one and system two thinking system one, you know, people think money solves everything. It doesn't. Like I mean, basically, if you're short on money, you got to look at your budget. Like I mean, really, you can get more money. And again, I can show you so many people that I mean, look at their poor people who don't steal what like it, and this goes to humans are irrational. If humans were rational, no one would ever steal. Or would they? Because maybe the C suite stealing, so they're going if they're stealing, why can I steal? So humans aren't rational because we wouldn't steal? We've because we would go to prison. But when you think about it a little differently. It's like, well, why wouldn't we they're getting or they're getting away with it. I want my little piece. And you said something earlier and I just did this new presentation with a lot of work by Francesca Gino at Harvard Business School. Oh my god, I love her. If you guys aren't familiar with her, check her out or look it up. She has awesome. People will cheat. If they think it benefits others.
Margarita Gurri:Yes, that's the altruism. Yeah. Yeah.
Unknown:And she's done work on this. Mind you, you know if it benefits them too, of course. But
Margarita Gurri:me I didn't turn my bookkeeper. And that's a form of cheating.
Unknown:Did you write the loss off?
Margarita Gurri:No, I come as a refugee. I don't believe in handouts. I don't. I don't even record give things I give away. I don't believe in that. Yeah, I think it doesn't count if you get credit for it. So no, it's interesting.
Unknown:There's a great guy out there who has pivot podcast, Prof. G. Scott Galloway, he has this funny thing about donations. He thinks that if people make a donation, you know, we're talking large donation, so ultra rich people to say get a building name. Because if you have a press release about your donation, you shouldn't get the tax write off. And I'm like, Yeah, isn't that awesome? He's kind of crazy. But you know what, I love some of these things. It's like, if you have to write a press release that you gave away $100 million? Well, you know,
Margarita Gurri:you could say that. That's the cost of PR.
Unknown:Yeah. Jeff Bezos, his ex wife, she's not hiring a PR firm to for her giving away her billions. Very, she's not every everyone every other billionaire does.
Margarita Gurri:Well, and I also like to think that there are good people, I think most people behave themselves around money, not because they're afraid of getting caught. But because they want to be good people and they don't want you know, they want to show a shiny soul. I mean, let's face it, if I'm going to hell, I'm Catholic, I'm going to hell. A better a really good looking grandpa had better be involved. I mean, it's not going to be about some Bitcoin or something like that, you know, just, you know, give me some good. And I'm not going to tarnish my soul over money, or harming somebody else in any way. You know, give me a puppy, you know, that's it.
Unknown:Absolutely.
Margarita Gurri:Yeah. Well, I think you've done a spectacular job. We would like to have you back though.
Unknown:I would love to come back.
Margarita Gurri:All right. And we'll we'll do a deeper dive because I think what you talk about is not only the slippery slope, but you have so much proof in evidence and the rabbi and I'm always talking about I mean, his book is grappling with the gray all these grappling and how do you justify you do it once and then twice and then on and on and on? I mean, they do it for it's kind of like a 40 year affair. It's easy to justify, you know, you're already there is just one more time No one noticed and whatever. So I'd love to address that issue. I
Yonason Goldson:mean, every action is moving the bar one direction or the other. Yeah, that's not standing still. Yeah. That's true.
Margarita Gurri:Because if you stand still, you're going backwards. I agree with St. Jude's aren't bad
Unknown:people, they are good people who have made a bad choice.
Margarita Gurri:I think that's true for most people who, who are in jail. I mean, we've talked with people who've killed somebody and done other things. And I, I think depends on your mindset. And if you were altered the drugs, alcohol or mental illness, or I mean, this, lots of reasons why people do things,
Yonason Goldson:this popular TV show Breaking Bad. I mean, I never watched it, because it's just
Margarita Gurri:vicious. It was really naughty. The storyline,
Yonason Goldson:as I understand it, is this, you know, nice upstanding guy who, because of the pressures of life, gradually gives into more and more compromised behavior?
Margarita Gurri:Well, and he's also, you know, there's an illness and so also, I think, values his life in a different way. You know, it's just interesting.
Unknown:There's just a quick story. There was a woman, I post stories on LinkedIn about embezzlement cases. And there was a woman who stole from Make a wish, and heard this.
Margarita Gurri:Oh, that makes me so sad.
Unknown:Well, she stole from Make a wish and I punched down. I made fun of her. And then I dug into her. She has two kids that have had brain surgery. And I did a huge Mia culpa. And from that point forward, I have been very careful when there is a suspect out there. I just did a presentation. And there's a woman who she had a gambling habit. She stole money, she had all sorts of pictures on Facebook of her kids, her with her kids, I didn't pull her picture from Facebook, I pulled her picture from LinkedIn, which had nothing to do with like her children. So I will not punch down. And you know, there go for grace of God go I We can't sit in judgment of some people
Margarita Gurri:know, when all of us have made mistakes and judgment, said or done things that we wish we hadn't done. I mean, it just, it's fascinating how sometimes the things that make us so embarrassed and ashamed are the things that teach us how to be better people moving forward. You know, it just interesting. Well, we did not ask you the question about your next adventure. What's your next adventure, ma'am?
Unknown:So I want to do this road show. Or Joe and I kind of did a job. And then I kind of did it, we go to different places and show embezzlements on Main Street, whether it's and these are all public records. So but I wanted to go out with and put it on YouTube was like little stories of like this building here, or this business here was ripped off by this woman. And I want to do that, because again, this needs to it's the relatable crime. We don't relate to Enron, or Bernie Madoff, we relate to, I mean, literally, within a stone's throw of my house, I can show you a business that was ripped off. I can drive from my house to Portland, Oregon, and I have places all along the way. So I kind of want to do this like World Tour. So people understand they see the victim, they see the type of business they see.
Margarita Gurri:Great, it's kinda instead of like ghost tours, it would be embezzlement tours. Yeah. Great. That'll be a lot of I can't wait to see it on YouTube. And maybe we'll even get a big sponsorship. You know,
Unknown:that would be nice.
Margarita Gurri:That would be very nice.
Unknown:Yeah. Yeah. Thank you guys so much for being on board to this. Thank you
Yonason Goldson:so much. And please come back again. We'd love to continue the conversation. Definitely. Dr. What's the last word?
Margarita Gurri:The last word is it's not worth it. I'm gonna take from Kelly Paxson. We had Kelly Paxton, talking about pink collar crime, and therefore the great but for the grace of God go any of us. And the issue is, think, how is it that we have made little tiny steps into the world of a color that isn't exactly how we want it to be? You know, I know there's red and black and green and all sorts of color clients, which I didn't know, by the way till I was researching for the show today. Which is interesting. So think it's not worth it. And we're delightful. We're delighted that you came. We think you're you're a delightful storyteller. And I'm so glad. And I think the planet is better off for having you on watch through embezzlement, launch. Boom, boom.
Yonason Goldson:I think that's good. Thank you.
Margarita Gurri:So everyone, catch us on the next rabbi in the shrink and I know you all look forward to hearing Kelly pack Students tell her tale about pink collar crime. Thank you. We'll see you next episode.
Unknown:Thank you for listening to the rabbi and the shrink every day ethics unscripted to book Dr. Red Shoe, Dr. Margarita Drewery or Rabbi Jonas and Goldson as speakers or advisors for your organization, contact them at the rabbi and the shrink.com. This has been a doctor Red Shoe production