Forbes Dedicates Blog To 'White Collar' Crime

It has always seemed to me that the press's interest in white-collar crime is directly proportional to how much cash was stolen. How many little Bernie Madoffs escape the spotlight? Don't get written up in the papers, so their friends, neighbors and business colleagues can read all about what they have done?

One of these types personally hurt my career, in several ways, so I have a visceral dislike for these bozos who, out of sheer greed, hurt the innocent, who just want to work and not worry about paying their bills.

Well, it seems Forbes has recognized this, too, as they have started a blog seemingly devoted to the little white collar criminals, called "White Collar Crime," what else? This Walter Pavlo who writes it is probably a great choice. A criminal himself who spent time in the Pen, he "since 2003, ... has presented his personal story of white-collar crime to universities, the FBI, various professional societies and corporations around the world. Pavlo co-authored "Stolen Without A Gun" with Neil Weinberg, Executive Editor Forbes Magazine. Walt holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from West Virginia University and an MBA from Mercer University," according to his blog profile.

According to a Bnet article, "In 1997--before MCI was acquired by WorldCom--Walter Pavlo, a former MCI billings manager, was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for wire fraud and money laundering. Over a six-month period in 1996, Pavlo and two associates defrauded MCI customers out of approximately US $6 million. In addition, at the direction of his supervisors, Pavlo helped manipulate the telecom company's accounting records to hide bad-debt expenses totaling US $180 million. The road he traveled to get to this point should be a stark reminder to internal auditors about the benefits of controls and a lesson to anyone who doubts the necessity of those controls or the potential for committing fraud that's within everyone."

The most recent post on the Forbes blog is interesting, titled, "When Prison Is Your Next Stop After Christmas." (I like this blog and have bookmarked it.)

It begins: "On Christmas day I received a phone call from “Joe”. Joe is 66 years old, still recovering from a stroke he suffered a few months back but has made a nice recovery. He still needs a cane to get around.

I have never met Joe but he reached out to me because someone had told him of my own prison adventure and he wanted some advice…he was due to report to federal prison on December 27th in South Carolina to begin serving a 10 year prison sentence for a white-collar crime.

Joe was in good spirits, considering his fate, though I could still tell there was a hope that his pending sentence would somehow not come to pass through either divine or human intervention. He read a letter in his hand that he had received from the Bureau of Prisons that gave him a date and time to report to prison….Noon, Monday, December 27th.

His first questions had to do with his well-being at prison, “Will I be safe?” he asked. I assured him that he would be safe and that the inmates he will meet will receive him in as a new member of the family and show him the rules of the institution. He wanted to know if there was an Orientation Class, to which I informed him there was not, to my knowledge. I’m not sure what an Orientation Class would even look like in prison, something like, “Here is your blanket, here is your cell, and here is your room mate for the next 10 years”. It was if Joe wanted to know that there was some structure or meaning to the journey that he was about to undertake....click the above link to read the rest.