The White-Collar Wives Project: Big Changes Coming in the New Year
It’s a New Year and with it comes big changes for The White-Collar Wives Project. Since its inception in 2016, the WCWP has been making medicine out of poison by providing strategic guidance and support to wives and adult children who are caught in the ruinous economic, legal, and emotional fallout of a spouse’s/parent’s white-collar criminal investigation, prosecution, and incarceration. White-collar crimes are not only an egregious breach of familial trust and duty, but family members often have to make the difficult decision to file charges against their spouse/parent for forged credit documents so they don’t have to absorb the enormous cost of paying for crimes performed against them, (this occurs more often than you think), and numerous other illegal acts performed by perps against unsuspecting family members. One of our founding WCWP members learned that her name was forged on more than a dozen mortgage documents and is now working with an attorney to have her name removed from those deeds, and is suing those involved.
Last year the WCWP began performing live webinars to professional associations on occupational crime deterrence, providing content that is as shocking as it is vital to companies large and small. The response to these webinars has been overwhelmingly positive and attendees have raved:
“Fascinating! I had no idea about the aftermath for families. You usually only hear about what happens to the accused”
“Good subject. Very informative
“Ms. Lawler was amazing. She is extremely knowledgeable…and that’s been hard earned. She has a lot to offer fraud examiners and attorneys”
“I wish the session could have been longer, mainly because the speaker was really interesting”
This feedback has been much appreciated as our efforts are genuinely motivated by the continued stream of urgent calls from innocent spouses who along with their children are suffering the brutal consequences from the fallout of occupational financial malfeasance.
The mission of the WCWP is to keep families safe and solvent. Our goal is occupational crime prevention through education. Toward that end, our six part series A New Perspective on Deterrence introduces External Deterrence Theory (ED) which was developed by the WCWP to replace standard General and Specific Deterrence Theory because obviously, fear of capture and punishment has little to no effect on bad actors. ED heightens the risks for would be perps considerably and goes far beyond capture and punishment. This series includes topics about the high risk of suicide among perps, takes a deep dive into profiling the white-collar criminal, the dangers of compartmentalized ethics, taxes on embezzled funds, the living nightmare of investigation, prosecution, incarceration, the harshness of re-entry, and so much more. This content is based on a years long study of over a hundred perps and their family members. It is a wild but worthwhile ride to the dark side and nothing like it has ever been presented before. It is our hope that this proprietary knowledge will become universally known because most anti-fraud programming is akin to having a finger shaken in your face, but A New Perspective on Deterrence anti-fraud series is a virtual trip to hell. By the time it’s over, you’ll never want to go there.
Because the public is not privy to what goes on behind the scenes of white-collar investigations, prosecutions, incarceration, and beyond, there is a pressing need for employees across all sectors to gain an understanding about the little known far reaching and long-lasting torrent of dire consequences that perps and their unsuspecting family members must endure as a result of a white-collar crime. Toward that end, the WCWP is now formally stepping into the corporate compliance space because too many organizations give too little attention to EFFECTIVE anti-fraud programming. As many of you know, (and I will keep repeating this serious warning until the message is fully received), the DOJ will be holding more executives accountable for corporate malfeasance, especially if the company has an ineffective compliance program or worse, none at all (according to the DOJ, 90% of companies have no compliance programming in place!). Bringing this new approach to deterrence into the corporate arena is a bold move on our part, and is especially bold because this series takes Occam’s Razor (Rule of Simplicity) to a new level in view of the fact that the answer to the compliance problem cannot be found within the mandates of company culture, internal controls, or perfectly executed software programming. Although these are all integral components of a compliance program, educating employees about how and why occupational crimes occur and highlighting the path of destruction these crimes generate for perps, and in turn, those closets to them, makes compliance personal. Making compliance personal is the answer to the compliance problem!
Corporations spend millions of dollars on compliance software and rely upon that software to streamline dissemination of (and adherence to) legal and professional standards for their industry/jurisdictions as well as to deliver internal company mandates. These systems usually include employee training tools, incident reporting, data collection for leadership to monitor the progress and effectiveness of their compliance programming, (have all employees viewed and checked a box?), internal auditing, etc. But there is no software program that can PREVENT intentional occupational malfeasance which is a big part of why protective procedures are put in place to begin with. Corporate leadership continues to begrudge spending millions of dollars on compliance programming to appease external auditors/regulators and to keep their company (and executives) safe from a few rogue employees who can and do cause enormous financial losses for corporations as well as considerable harm to a company’s/industry’s reputation. With the DOJ keeping a watchful eye out, compliance programs with “insurance policies” that do not have effective anti-fraud protection, leave themselves exposed to prosecution.
This series is presented via live webinars or to management in a roundtable setting. If your company is looking for FULL PROTECTION against occupational crime and would like to be on the cutting edge of becoming part of the solution to the compliance problem, please contact Lisa Lawler at lawlerlisa1@gmail.com or click on our Webinar page on this website for more information.
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Grassroots activism has been impacting society for centuries by changing the social dynamics that pose a significant threat to the quality of life. Occupational crimes not only pose a significant threat to companies, but also, to families. The White-Collar Wives Project represents over 200 (and counting) white-collar innocent spouses from around the world who, along with their children, have had to endure severe far reaching, long-lasting, and highly punitive legal and economic repercussions as a result of their spouse’s occupational felonious actions. Lest there be any doubt, we are not little ladies with a cause, but highly vested frontline compliance stakeholders who are at war with occupational crime.
The White-Collar Wives Project has been featured in the New York Times, The American Bar Association Journal, Forbes, Market Watch, Bravo/Oxygen, the AFCE, and many esteemed national podcasts.
