Fool Me Once: A Conversation about Fraud with Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope

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How can understanding fraud change the way we navigate our careers? Join us for a special 40th birthday celebration for Dr. Langston Clark as we aim to secure 40 new donors for the From A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship. Our featured guest, Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope, an A&T alumna and accomplished professor of accounting at DePaul University, takes us on a journey through her academic and professional life. From her early days in Durham, North Carolina, influenced by her father, a college professor, to earning her PhD at Virginia Tech, Dr. Pope's story is a testament to the transformative power of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

In our candid discussion, Dr. Pope shares her expertise on fraud, using captivating real-life stories to explain the complex roles of perpetrators and whistleblowers. She breaks down the ethical dilemmas that young professionals may face in the workplace and offers insights into how storytelling can reveal the intricacies of fraud. Drawing from her book "Fool Me Once," Dr. Pope categorizes the different types of fraud actors and dives into the moral quandaries surrounding figures like Robin Hood, examining how societal perceptions shift based on motivations and outcomes.

We also touch on the controversial world of cryptocurrency, likening it to Ponzi schemes and discussing the importance of understanding where real value lies. To round out this rich conversation, we reflect on our efforts to support the From A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship, inviting listeners to contribute to this meaningful cause. Tune in to celebrate milestones, absorb impactful stories, and appreciate the vital role of education and integrity in our professional journeys.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

What's up everybody. Once again, this is Dr Langston Clark, the founder and organizer of Entrepreneur Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting Black businesses. I want to welcome you to a special series of our podcast celebrating a milestone that is close to my heart my 40th birthday. As part of this celebration, I'm setting an ambitious goal to gain 40 new donors for the from A&T to PhD endowed scholarship at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, an endowment that I co-founded to support teachers and educators who are on their journeys to get graduate degrees. For those of you who have joined our live discussions, you know that typically, 10% of the profits from the podcast go to support this endowment. However, for the months of June and July, I am thrilled to announce that 100% of the profits will be dedicated to the From A&T to PhD endowed Scholarship. If you are inspired to support this cause, a link to contribute to the endowment can be found in the show notes. We're asking listeners to generously support the From A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship to help more educators increase their education so that they can better support the students in our community. This special series will feature testimonials from A&T alumni who have gone on to earn their PhDs, sharing their journeys and impact of their education on their lives and career. It will also feature some new episodes from authors who have written books about HBCUs and a few throwback episode.

Speaker 1: 1:52

We feature a conversation with the award-winning filmmaker and scholar, dr Kelly Richmond Pope, an A&T alum, who is currently a professor of accounting at DePaul University. Currently a professor of accounting at DePaul University, she is also the author of Fool Me Once, scams Stories and Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry. I want to introduce our guest here today, dr Kelly Richmond-Polk, who is the author of Fool Me Once, scams Stories and Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry. Just tell us a little about your stories. How did you get to become Dr Kelly Richmond Polk? What's your from A&T to PhD story? Before we get into the content?

Speaker 2: 2:32

Well, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. First of all, I want to say that I grew up in Durham, north Carolina, and my father actually was a college professor, a business school dean and then later a college president. So my father had a PhD in operations research from Purdue University. So my mother was a guidance school counselor. So I have education running through my veins. I'm a second generation college professor, so I'm proud of that because it's something that I always felt like I wanted to do, because I saw my dad do it and I really like the legacy of that. I saw that he had, and so my father passed away in 1999. However, he poured into so many students, and so it's always refreshing to go back to Durham and meet someone that said you know, your father was my professor, or your father was my chancellor, or your father was my fill in the blank. He also was an associate dean at the business school at Howard University, so I think that being a professor was something that I saw, and I saw it as a way to scale yourself. So, when you think about entrepreneurship, being an academic is very entrepreneurial as well, because you walk into these classrooms and you create these experiences for students that hopefully are memorable.

Speaker 2: 3:49

So I knew that I wanted to go to a historically Black college and university. My parents both are graduates from Fisk University. My brothers are graduates from Howard University. My cousins are graduates from Howard University. I've got six, seven other family members that went to Fisk University. I have a couple of cousins that went to Kentucky state university, so that's just sort of part of where we start in my family.

Speaker 2: 4:09

So I knew that that that's where I was going to go.

Speaker 2: 4:11

I either applied to I think I applied to Spelman Spelman, famu, a&t and Howard, but out of all of those, of course A&T has and still at the time A&T had the best business school and still does. So I went there and majored in accounting, got my undergraduate degree in accounting and then my father being a professor and also being friends with the legendary Dean Quyster Craig, he told Dean Craig my daughter is going to get her PhD, so don't talk to her about interviewing for jobs, because she's going to get her PhD Coming out of A&T. I was a senior where everybody else was applying for jobs. I was applying to graduate school. So I went on and got my master's in accounting, first from Virginia Tech and then went on to pursue my PhD in accounting from Virginia Tech. So my strategy was I wanted to apply to a university that had a master's and a PhD program in accounting. So I applied to the University of South Carolina and Virginia Tech and Virginia Tech was a little bit closer to home at the time.

Speaker 1: 5:12

So that's that journey from A&T to the PhD for me I should have mentioned this earlier for the audience Dr Pope. She's a foremost expert on fraud and beyond just the book, she's got documentaries. I think I read in here that, like you've been an expert witness. And so, beyond being a professor, talk about your entrepreneurial journey, because sometimes, like I'm just gonna be honest with you we get socialized as faculty to be very narrow publish or perish. Do your research, publish, publish, publish. I've had. When I was in grad school and I was thinking my master's degree, one of the faculty members was like yo, if you come here to get your doctorate, we're preparing you to be an R1, to do research, not to go do stuff in a community or movies, whatever, not even go to a teaching school. So talk about how you've been able to do both to be a recognized professor, faculty member, but then also be accessible to the broader world and communities outside of academia.

Speaker 2: 6:08

So, as with any career, you go through stages and so you go get your PhD. Most of us are at an R1 institution and most of our advisors are encouraging us to go teach at an R1 university. But you have to make the decision of what works best for you. What is your heart telling you to do? Where do your passions lie? Because I think if you work in your passion, then you're definitely working in your purpose. And so the publisher pairs is real, and that is true at a certain point of your career. So I've always known and make no mistake, I know that the mainstream publishing and my research area. I do that too, but I do that just to keep the wolves away, you know, because you have to. And so I've just had this dual career approach for a long time because I didn't want to be as narrow, but early in my career I was. So going from assistant to associate professor you have to publish, you're doing, you know, you know the targets you have to hit. Professor you have to publish, you're doing, you know, you know the targets you have to hit. But going from associate to a full professor and then going from a full professor to an endowed chair is about worldwide impact, and so it's really hard to have worldwide impact if you're targeting just three journals that you are trying to hit, so you can't do that as easily.

Speaker 2: 7:22

So what I was always thinking about is what the tenure requirements at a lot of schools are research, publications and scholarly activities creative works Because when you think about tenure and promotion at a university, it's not just your department. You have theater schools, you have film schools, you have other ways that a committee has to determine scholarly, and I was probably one of the first people that took scholarly in the business school seriously, because a documentary is a scholarly piece of work. It's a creative piece of work, but it's a scholarly piece of work. So I have always had done both, though.

Speaker 2: 7:58

But what people know me for is not the publications in the journals that our dissertations chairs encourage us to do. That's not what I'm known for. I'm known, really, for doing all the Queen's horses, creating an immersive game called Reds Black Mania, and now Fool Me what. So you have to decide what you want to be and sort of walk in your passion, and so, for me, I always loved movies, I always loved film and TV, so that's a vehicle for me to teach and I always loved mysteries and true crime, and so I thought that was a way to invigorate accounting classes, and so I use the lens of fraud and film to really talk about accounting and ethical lapses and white collar crime. So I just figured out how to blend the career that was expected of me and the career that I wanted of me, so I just merged the two together.

Speaker 1: 8:52

So let me ask this how do you make a documentary? Did you have to crowdfund? Did you get angel investors? Did you put your own money for it? Look, I got this camera. We're going to go do these. No, no, no, no, no. What's the process for building?

Speaker 2: 9:05

So, first of all, what's interesting about a documentary is the skill set required for a documentary is very similar to the same skill set for a research paper. What is your research question and what data do you need to collect to answer that research question? The data in a documentary film is talking to people, and then you need to vet those people that you're talking to people and then you need to vet those people that you're talking to. So it's a very similar process in terms of funding, because I did the documentary when I was an associate professor.

Speaker 2: 9:32

I get asked to do a lot of keynotes and training at trainings at corporations, and so it was easier to go back to a company and say, hey, I'm doing this project, I think it's going to have massive appeal. Would you be willing to make a donation to this film? And so I did that a couple of times, enough to have enough money to fund the documentary, and so it was a very expensive project to do One and done. That's why I hadn't seen another one. But you'd be surprised what you know. When you stretch yourself and find a complementary field, you learn what you want. When you stretch yourself and find a complementary field, you learn what you want to learn and the documentary film process. Filmmaking process was not very different from the research writing process of a paper. You wouldn't think so, but it really is.

Speaker 1: 10:16

That's interesting, because one of the fears that scholars have I don't say fears, but for some people in graduate school they're afraid that their writing isn't good enough and I would imagine for somebody wanting to do a documentary, is my filmmaking good enough? Like, that's the equivalent of like. Can you write the work, but just in a different, in a different arena.

Speaker 2: 10:33

I never questioned myself that way, because early in your career nothing is where it is when you're more senior in it. So when I was a first year graduate student, no, my writing wasn't where it is now. You know, that's just known. So probably the answer to that question is no, it probably wasn't good enough. You know, it wasn't good enough to write a book to be published by Harvard Business Review Press not then. So you know, you, you, you evolve. So you have to recognize that, or at least I recognize that.

Speaker 2: 11:01

I was at different stages and if I had that doubt and there were times where I felt like, uh, I want my brain, my writing, I just want to improve. So I started reading more, I started reading the economist more, I started reading the financial times more, I started reading things that would push me to think in a different way. So I sort of reshaped the way what I was consuming and then that reshaped the right, the way of my output. So if you, if you have that doubt, fix it. You know if, if you have that doubt, it probably does need to be improved. So you know that that's coming from somewhere. You, you know, when you hadn't done what you needed to do, and so you know what you need to do to fix it. So fix it.

Speaker 1: 11:38

So did you watch more documentaries to prepare for the documentary?

Speaker 2: 11:43

Uh, I didn't, Because I mean I didn't watch more than I normally did because I knew the story that I wanted to tell, because I had a question that I wanted answered. So I was. The question I was trying to figure out when I did my documentary was how does one person still fifty three million dollars and no one know? That was the question that I wanted to answer. So it made it easy for me to do the research, to talk to the people, to track the people down to find out the answer to that question. So I love stories and so I appreciate the storytelling process of any piece of content, whether it's watching ballet or on Peacock, whether it's watching something on Netflix, whether it's Inventing Anna or Ozarks. There is an art to storytelling and I think that you can pull from that to place your scenario into a storytelling format to make it sound better. So I didn't watch more, but I did enroll in a film fellowship program that was sponsored by this organization called Cartemquin Films, and they launched this program called Diverse Voices and Docs, and what they wanted to do was to try to diversify the filmmaking landscape in Chicago. And so I applied to this program, not thinking that I would get in, and I did.

Speaker 2: 13:02

But numbers tell stories. I mean, if you think about what a number is, a number is the end point of a series of transactions or actions made by someone. So let's sort of roll it back and find the people that made those transactions and start talking to them. So that's why it was important to study it. I mean, I didn't just say I'm going to make a documentary, I'm going to pick up my iPhone and start shooting. I had to meet the right people. So my director of photography, keith Walker, works with Oprah, my other director of photography being Lou. I was nominated for an Oscar for his documentary Mind in the Gap about four or five years ago. So these are real people. And so doing that film fellowship program put me in the community of the best. So I knew if I'm going to do it, I'm going to got to do it right and I got to be around the best. And so it gave me the, the network that I needed to just to produce at the highest level.

Speaker 1: 13:56

All the clean sources is is in some ways, in this book. Sure, I'm wondering if you could tell us the biography of the book. So what? What's the story behind the story? How did you create the book?

Speaker 2: 14:08

Well, one thing that you'll notice with the book and yes, you're right, all the clean sources is throughout the entire book, because there's a lot about the process of doing a documentary and what I learned. All of it's not in the film. So the film is an entertainment piece, but the book is part entertainment, part educational as well, and so the way I organized the book was based on the really the key players when fraud happens, that's, the perpetrators, the prey and the whistleblowers. And over the years what I've noticed is all perpetrators aren't the same, all prey aren't the same and all whistleblowers aren't the same. And so when we think about a lot of the true crime that we watch, that we consume on TV or listen on true crime podcasts, a lot of times they are talking about intentional perpetrators, and those are people that know the ins and outs of an organization, know the loopholes, use those loopholes to receive personal gain. Most of us don't identify with an intentional perpetrator, but many of us can identify with these other two categories that are in the book, and those are accidental perpetrators and righteous perpetrators. And so the book is organized based on those chapters. So, like chapter number one, two and three, the first section is about perpetrators. The second section are about innocent bystanders and organizational targets, and then the last three chapters are about whistleblowers, and you can have three types of whistleblowers. Now, whistleblowers is a very targeted word, triggering word, because when I say whistleblower you say snitch. When I say whistleblower, you say traitor. When I say whistleblower, you say snake. You know a busybody, you say all of these things.

Speaker 2: 15:45

That is a category of whistleblowers and they're called vigilante whistleblowers. But we need them. They don't mind their own business, but they have very valuable information to share. You want a whistleblower, you know. I think about the vigilante whistleblower, like the older lady that's sitting in the window watching the cars go by and the person that's speeding down the street. She's calling the police. You want her there. You know you actually do. She's not minding her own business, she's keeping an eye on the community. That's the vigilante whistleblower.

Speaker 2: 16:11

The other two categories of whistleblowers are also very important and those are accidental whistleblowers and noble whistleblowers. And so Kathy Swanson, who is the whistleblower in my documentary All the Queen's Horses, is classified as an accidental whistleblower. She just was doing her job and stumbled upon something that her boss was doing wrong and kept investigating it. And then a noble whistleblower is very similar to a vigilante whistleblower, because they are part of a team and they know what the team is supposed to do. They know the safety protocols, for example, that a team is supposed to go through and say your team decides they're not going to do it anymore, and you step out and say, uh-uh, we didn't do this right and I'm going to let our supervisors know. You sort of step outside of the group and let and you blow the whistle.

Speaker 2: 16:55

That's the noble whistleblower. So I thought that it was important to create these categories so that people could see their own roles that they play in sort of this fraud cycle. So the book is organized based on those chapters, followed by stories and cases of people that I've interviewed over the years that have visited my class, and then the All the Clean Sources story runs throughout.

Speaker 1: 17:17

I think about the perpetrators. Oh which perpetrator. The perpetrator, who was, was righteous. The righteous perpetrator was like Robin Hood I'm defrauding these rich people, but I'm giving it to poor. I'm helping my sick family. I'm you know, this community over here is poor. Well, guess what? I'm buying everybody Christmas gifts, backpacks or whatever. Yep, I guess I'm wondering, from a moral perspective, how do you think society should deal with those folks? What if, at the end of the day they're, their net outcome is more positive than negative, even though they were thieves, right Even?

Speaker 2: 17:50

though. Yeah, and I think I think society does deal with them by. There's a difference in the way they're sentenced. So you think about if you steal because you have a sick child and you're trying to help them pay for their medicine, there's going to be a little bit more leniency on you than if you steal because you just wanted to go shopping and go to Jamaica for three months. You know there is a difference, and so I think that the variability we see in sentencing guidelines is really largely contingent upon these categories that they fall into. So I think that they are dealt with through the way society treats them.

Speaker 2: 18:30

What was interesting to me about the righteous perpetrators, compared to the intentional perpetrators, is the empathy that we show for them. So if you are a righteous perpetrator and these are some of the cases in the book, some of the stories in the book if you are a righteous perpetrator and you did something to try to help somebody else but you didn't receive any direct personal gain and it really the person that you tried to help is the wrong person, but you just are being taken down by them. People can see that and understand what happened and they tend to rally around these righteous perpetrators because they understand they didn't do, they were just trying to help, and so I think that the empathy that we have tends to be larger when we can understand the why, why somebody did it. Now you're still a perpetrator. I'm not saying you're not gonna go to jail, but you might not go to jail for a long time, as long as you would if you're an intentional perpetrator.

Speaker 1: 19:22

So I have an interesting question about perpetrators. So it seemed like you interviewed all of these perpetrators and obviously, when they were at the point where they're talking, they're older than they were when they actually did the crime. Some of them OK, yes, some of them Do you see a correlation between age and when you were a perpetrator? Because, like you say, like for guys, like, your brains are fully developed to your 25. So your decision making isn't all there. You're not making the best decisions. Are you less likely to be a like? Is age correlated with you being a perpetrator? But then I guess you could also correlate with being a whistleblower, because whistleblowing is also risky behavior.

Speaker 2: 19:59

Sure it is. Yeah, I understand your question. I think I haven't seen a ton of story. It's done a ton of studies about just isolating age as a variable, because I think there's so many other independent variables that impact one's decision to be a perpetrator.

Speaker 2: 20:16

But I think that what you may notice is an accidental perpetrator is a person that is a people pleaser, they're a team player and their boss might ask them to do something. You feel like it's sort of fishy, but you don't have the confidence to push back. You know, it's almost like if I asked you to do something right now. If I asked you, you know what? I just need you to sign this check for me. Can you just do it for me? And you might say, oh gosh, you know she's a fellow Aggie, she's a little bit older than me. You know, I want to say I want to stay, I want to network with her. I'm not going to push back, I'm just going to do it because she asked me to and I really I like her and hopefully it's legit. I'm just going to trust that it's fine.

Speaker 2: 20:57

That might be the position that you're in, and so what's interesting, when you ask the question about age, the accidental perpetrator tends to be, or can be, younger, because you think about it, the person that's first inside of an organization that last hire that youngest person, they're the one that's likely going to see all the flaws in the system. So you got the old heads like me that I've been somewhere for 17 years, I'm used to it. But then I hire you. You come on in and you say, oh, this process is messed up. All these things are wrong. You notice it, but are you really going to say anything? You probably aren't. You're going to push back. And if I, the OG on the team, ask you to do, something.

Speaker 1: 21:37

You might just do it and you could end up being an accidental perpetrator. That makes sense. It just seems like the accidental perpetrator and the God. What's the equivalent of whistleblower? Like you're like an accidental whistleblower.

Speaker 2: 21:45

Oh. So yeah, you can be an accidental whistleblower too. Yeah, you can be an accidental whistleblower too.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Yeah, I'd be an accident. The thin line.

Speaker 2: 21:50

Right. But what's interesting about whistleblowing is where I think there's an inverse relationship, because whereas the perpetrator, the accidental perpetrator tends to be younger, can be a little bit younger, a little less senior, the whistleblower categories you win. By the time you are a vigilante whistleblower, you don't have much to lose. You know, you're on the way out, you're retired, you're the old woman in this window checking. You don't care if people like you or not, you're just trying to keep the community safe.

Speaker 2: 22:21

So think about it in terms of the vigilante being the most extreme, the most senior person. And then you have your noble person that could be like your middle level manager, and the accidental person. That's that fresh person. They're, they're new on the job and they see something and they might stumble upon it because they're just, you know, head down doing the work and they notice something. So there is, I think, and a correlation, but I haven't, I haven't tested it, I haven't isolated the variable to say that it's. You know this is statistically significant. That age dictates which category. I haven't said it yet, but that could be a future study that maybe I'll do.

Speaker 1: 22:55

So I have this pastor that I listen to who I think is great. His name is Andy Stanley. He does a really good sermon series about your character and even he kind of talks about like the psychology of build your character, which is some of the things that are like in your book. So I'm wondering from your perspective, even though you don't talk about guardrails overtly, how do you or specifically I should say I saw him who's done this research for years, how would you suggest that people in their working environment? Or, if I'm new in my career, how do I establish the guardrail that doesn't allow me to become the accidental perpetrator? That doesn't allow me to become the accidental perpetrator? Maybe it's the guardrail that allows me to be the whistleblower, the good person that whistleblows when I'm supposed to, and not the person who is purposeful bystander.

Speaker 2: 23:39

I think that's a complicated question. Because it's complicated? Because we don't respect people's guardrails, and so we can establish them, but are they going to be honored? You know, when you say, you know what, when I'm on the job, traveling for work, I don't drink, I don't go to happy hours, I don't drink. But when you say that and when you do that, do people respect that? Or do people then say Kelly, she's not a good team player? You know she, she doesn't mix and mingle well, you know. So the question, so the reason why I hesitate to answer, is because we can establish guardrails, but I'll do it. You respect them.

Speaker 2: 24:16

You have to find the environment where I think your guardrails are respected, and that can be hard, you know, because sometimes it could be very different. So I think paying attention to the culture of an organization and seeing if it matches with your culture is key. For example, there are some people that operate by any means necessary. It doesn't matter, I'm gonna. All I need to do is book these sales and that's how this organization runs, and I feel comfortable in this risky environment.

Speaker 2: 24:38

There are some people that are risk takers. So maybe being in cryptocurrency or maybe being in some of these more speculative type fields work for your personality. But if you are risk averse, maybe you like to stay in the government and work for the government. Where you know check is steady, you know the government's never really going to go away, the likelihood of your job being eliminated is is less. So I think you got to. You got to know yourself first and then know your environment, know what they say on paper and then know what they do, and then see if those two things your personal guardrails and those corporate guardrails align. Because when they don't, that's when you can find yourself being pushed to do something that you don't really feel comfortable doing.

Speaker 1: 25:22

So I like what you did because you can reverse the way I was thinking about the guardrail. So I was in another guardrail. I'm going into this work environment and I have systems in place for myself that are going to allow me to do certain things, but what can happen to you is, in your environment, people you aren't the one bumping against the guardrail, people are bumping against yours. That's right. Yeah, that's right. It's important for people to think about that, no matter where you are in your career. Understand where your guard rules are, but then understand wait, this person is.

Speaker 2: 25:53

They're pushing. They're pushing against you know. It's like the bumper car they're pushing against you. So how are you? Are you going to bend, or are you going to stay steady? What are you going to do?

Speaker 1: 26:01

So if you're someone who's young in your career or young in your business, right, interestingly, I'm at a crypto conference right now, every year. I guess that's actually one of the questions I'm going to ask you about, because I want to get your thoughts on crypto. But we go a little bit to the end. You have all this pressure to do something. That seems a bit unethical. You're early in career. Do you just quit? You got a daughter, right, you got kids. So they in the workforce, someone saying, hey, it's a startup, whatever. Look, this is what we're going to do, not quite the rules, is it? Is it best for you to just just quit and leave it alone?

Speaker 2: 26:36

You know. It depends on, I think, what the rule is. We're talking about Something I asked my students who are you willing to go to jail for? Take out a piece of paper, write it down, who are you willing to go to jail for, and if that paper is blank or if it has names on it, you know you decide what your next moves are. But I think it really depends on what the rules that are being broken, if they are just personal values or if they are legalities that are being broken. So I think you have to, because there is a difference. You know, establishing that people need to work 80 hours a week might just be something you don't agree with, but it's not against the law, you know. But if you work at a publicly traded company and there's insider trading going on, you're breaking the law. So it depends on what it is, I think, to decide should you leave.

Speaker 2: 27:14

I think another factor is most of us don't live our lives where we can leave our jobs, and so when you think about personal finance and saving, we are tied to those jobs.

Speaker 2: 27:34

I mean, think about if most of us found out tonight that we had two weeks left on that job. Most of us, most of us, are not prepared to live in a manner that we could sustain ourselves for even a month, month and a half, two months, you know. So leaving a job is not easy. So I think you know setting up that that rainy day fund really early is is important because these companies, a lot of them, have a by any means necessary approach to the way they they operate. A lot of them do. You know, I'm going to take the risk and then I'll explain later when you call on me, and so also, depending on the color of your skin and your gender, that may work for you or against you, depending on who picks up on what you're doing. So I think living responsibly is an easier said than done thing, but that's what we have to think about, because these corporations can be very risky environments to work in. Our own businesses can be very risky environments to work in.

Speaker 1: 28:27

So maybe that's a guardrail that people can't push up against. If you're wise with your money and you set up your rainy day fund so you can live six months without a job or whatnot and maintain, maybe that's one guardrail you can set up in place that whomever can bump up against. But you got to make it those six months. You got to get to the point where you save up those six months too. So, for sure, for sure, I finished reading the book today. I do read the entire book. I got my notes tabs in here and everything.

Speaker 1: 28:54

So I remember it's a story towards the end of the book and it's the guy who was working for that big company that had like $85 billion of revenue and they were working with the food and whatnot. He was embezzling money and I think about. He was always talking about his lifestyle. He wanted to maintain a lifestyle and his wife was like the feds are here. If you don't go tell them what was going on, I'm going to. Yeah, I was like man, people get gripped by their money and we all do.

Speaker 2: 29:21

Yeah, we all do, though you know we, yeah, it can happen, I mean, especially as you move up and you are, you know, making well more than six figures and you are have stock options and you have a family and you have five cars and you have multiple houses. Yeah, you know you're, you're feeding that lifestyle, so it's hard to walk away from that.

Speaker 1: 29:42

That. That, to me, was one of the more poignant stories, especially because his wife, his wife, was his guardrail and I don't know when. I don't think she left, though oh, she didn't leave him. Stay with him, so that that day with him was very interesting. Because there are other stories where the where the wife, where the husband became the ex, the ex-spouse that person's wife stood with him. I think about who you are in this book and there's two things that stand out to me. It's obvious that you have tremendous amount of respect for whistleblowers like tremendous. You don't like the terms snitch, rat, whatever, you don't like those terms. But it also seems like you have a lot of what I would say non-judgment for perpetrators, necessarily Like they come to your class, they reach out to you, you have conversation with them. What is it like for you interacting with these folks who essentially have been liars and thieves? How do you do the research in that, where you're not judging them for what they do?

Speaker 2: 30:38

Sure, first is to keep it candid and 100.

Speaker 2: 30:42

They just got caught telling their lies. A lot of us don't. I mean, you know how many of us, by the grace of God, are where they were. And so I think about changing the narrative around. Look at what they did and sort of turn in a mirror and say, well, look at what I do. I have called a personal expense a work expense. Many a day I have taken a friend out and called it work lunch and it was a friend's lunch. I have been sent something from Amazon and I didn't. I ordered one and got two and kept both of them or sold the other one on eBay. I mean, people's transgressions start small and we all do stuff like that. So I feel like, just because their transgression was larger or more known, I want to. I want to learn from them, because there's pieces of all of us in all of these stories. And so what I did?

Speaker 2: 31:33

If you go to my website, kelly Richmond Pope dot com, and go to the top, you'll see games. There's a game I created that goes with the book and it's called the Fool Me Once Fraud Experience. And and go to the top, you'll see games. There's a game I created that goes with the book and it's called the Fool Me Once Fraud Experience. And so if you click there, you'll see this game and it's the first game, and you click on that and it, you play it, and there's two paths that you can play. It's either you can report fraud or you can commit fraud, and so when you go through each side, what it tells you is if you were ever to be a whistleblower, what category would you fall in? Would you be an accidental whistleblower? Would you be a noble whistleblower or would you be a vigilante whistleblower? On the perpetrator side, it tells you the same. It tells you would you be an intentional perpetrator, an accidental perpetrator or a righteous perpetrator? And it's fascinating to see where people are falling. So when you read the book, if you're an intentional perpetrator, that's the chapter you're in. You know that's what you identify with. And so what I tried to do was to create real scenarios that we find ourselves in, and a story that I tell in the book is there's a purse that I purchased from this designer in California, and I bought the purse. It came. I was super excited.

Speaker 2: 32:43

Well, the next day, a second purse came. I only ordered one purse, did not order two purses, and so when that second purse came, I was like, oh yeah, I got to send this back. But I was talking to a couple of my friends. I'm like, girl, don't you send that purse back, sell it. It wasn't your fault that they sent you two purses. You can pocket that money. We can go to dinner, like no, no, no. And I said we can't do that, I'm not doing that. And they're like, well, why not? I said, well, think about it.

Speaker 2: 33:07

A is wrong, let's start there. A is wrong. I do for our research, you know bad, look. But two, what if I did do what you said? I kept the purse, sold it on eBay and pocketed the money. And then two months later the company calls me and says hey, kelly, we noticed we were doing our inventory check and we noticed we actually sent you two purses. Can you send that purse back to us? What am I going to do now? I sold it? Am I going to tell them I sold it or am I going to lie about it? So let's say I lie about it and they say well, the tracking and the image shows that the bag was delivered to your house. So you're telling me now that this image is inaccurate and you didn't get this back.

Speaker 2: 33:43

A story of lies, a circle of lies? I don't want to be. I don't want that on my conscience. So you would be surprised how many people, when they do that scenario in the game, say, absolutely I'm keeping the purse, I'm not calling the story at all, I'm not calling I mean an accident that happens to me all the time. This is us. Everybody's not like Bernard Madoff. Some people are just like you and me, where they're going to take that extra bag or they're going to steal steal from their employer, but they don't think about it as stealing because they think about oh, it's just extra time, I'm doing some personal things. Your company didn't pay you to do that. That's a form of it too, you know. So we have to realize our own missteps so we can curb fraud and make it go down globally. So that's what I wanted to do. So if it feels as though I'm giving respect to them and no judgment, it's all of us. We all can do these things. So I don't want to come from that judgment zone because we all do it.

Speaker 1: 34:59

They just got caught. I was man. This book made me think about myself. I'm like anxiety is too strong of a word. But for the sake of the conversation, if I had anxiety, I had it in two ways. The first way was wait a minute, this is me. I can be one of those people. And the way that you wrote it in an inalienable way was like a hidden curriculum in the book about this could be you and you break down how this person could be the individual reading the book.

Speaker 1: 35:22

So I was afraid for myself because I don't want to go to jail, I don't want to shame my family name, mess over my wife, family, all of that stuff. So earlier today I stepped on an anthill and I didn't know and ants swung on my foot and so for the rest of the day I'm like I got ants all over me. I had an itch in my throat. I'm like, did I swallow an ant? And they weren't anywhere near my mouth? And so now I'm walking around. I'm like yo, is my wound really a con man? So I'm like going back, I'm analyzing that don't make any sense. Now I'm on a lurk. Is everybody playing a con game? And so going to the end of the book. Right, you talk about these guys wanting to do this story on cryptocurrency and they're going to fly. You Was it Spain, was it Greece? It was Spain. They know about your work and all of that stuff, and so you said you had to vet them. I'm sitting here wondering what's your vetting process?

Speaker 2: 36:14

Can't tell you that one.

Speaker 1: 36:17

How do you know when it's appropriate to vet?

Speaker 2: 36:19

somebody. It's always appropriate to vet somebody, especially when you meet somebody online and they're talking about we're going to fly you first class, business class, to south of Spain in a week. You know you're like, oh, you deserve some vetting because that sounds crazy. So you know it just. It just was too good to be true, which is what I think about cryptocurrency. It's too good to be true, which is what I think about cryptocurrency. It's too good to be true. You know, there's a reason why the banking system is set up the way that it is. There is safety and guardrails placed in that system for a reason, and so it's just too good to be true. As my grandmother told me, there is no such thing as free money. You know that's the most expensive money out there. Anything free is the most expensive you'll ever pay. So I just always kept that close to me.

Speaker 1: 37:04

That's interesting. So this is. This is really good, because I just did a whole series on the podcast about cryptocurrency, about well, no, I can't say that, it's black folks and blockchain technology and blockchain technology.

Speaker 2: 37:15

OK, blockchain is different. That's a little that that's not equal.

Speaker 1: 37:19

There's not necessarily equal cryptocurrency. I guess this gets into the one of the last questions I have. If you're writing a final chapter about the book or an additional chapter to the book, what would it be? What would you write If you were writing about cryptocurrency? Let's say, if you're having your vetting process for crypto, what will your concerns be?

Speaker 2: 37:37

You know, my biggest concerns about cryptocurrency is the lack of education, financial literacy that many of the crypto investors have, and so if you don't understand the banking system, you definitely don't understand the underpinnings of blockchain and cryptocurrency. And yet you think you heard something, that you can make a lot of money. The returns are high. So, you know, give me your money and it. For me, crypto feels like a well-marketed Ponzi scheme, you know, like who invests early are the big winners. So, just like any nice pyramid scheme, the people at the top are the people that win. The people at the bottom, well, you know, pray.

Speaker 2: 38:17

So I think it's sort of set up that way, or stated differently. It's like a glorified multi-level marketing type business, and so can money be made? Sure, but is the money being made because there is a sound, identifiable asset that generates money at its core? Not really. You're trying to find as many people to invest and you have to hold it for a certain time to take your money out. What's the asset, though? What's the asset? You know? You think about Starbucks. The asset is coffee, but it's not. You're making money based on how many people go through the revolving door, and if more people go through the revolving door. You make money with no underlying asset. That then rings Ponzi scheme, multi-level marketing kind of thing. So it's a little red flag for me because I just don't understand it.

Speaker 1: 39:09

Man, you had a dope quote in a book for somebody and it was like I'm going to get it wrong. It was at some point when the vocabulary reaches a point where it's so complex, it just automatically.

Speaker 2: 39:20

Confusion, confusion is the fraudster's best friend. You point where it's so complex it just automatically Confusion, confusion is the fraudster's best friend. You know, it's like if you and I had this had the same conversation and I started talking about generally accepted accounting principles and started talking about all these FASBs and codes and all these things. If that's how I was answering your question. I'm just trying to confuse you, to sound smart and I'm just trying to confuse you. I could do that.

Speaker 2: 39:44

You know, I could write a book that is not accessible, that is about a bunch of jargon. It has that has a bunch of psychology and a bunch of research, and you might not have read it and enjoyed it in the same way that when I'm just talking to you, like I'm talking to you right now, and that's sort of the voice that I use in the book. So what you're talking about is just how confusion is the fraudsters like best friend. Because if something is hard to understand, beware, it should be easy to understand. If I invest $50 and in five months I'm going to have five million and you can't explain to me how I get to 50 for five million in at least five sentences, beware, you should be able to understand it.

Speaker 1: 40:20

You know what this makes me think about the academy and professors and listen like you. Go to a class. The professor has a PhD and I'm not saying this is me or you, but students complain about it all the time. I don't understand what the professor is saying, but they paid all this money in but the professor never learned how to teach and so the students aren't getting what they pay for. When you said that, it made me immediately made me think about higher ed.

Speaker 2: 40:47

That's tangential, but I had to bring that up. Well, you have to understand too that we got our PhD to learn research. That doesn't mean we know how to teach. So it's like you go to a pilot school to be a pilot to then fly a plane. There's a direct relationship with the education and the action. For us, there's not a direct relationship between the education that we receive to do what we're doing and the action. Teaching is a byproduct. You know it helps your university make money, but it may not be how you advance your research, because there's often not a. There's a huge disconnect between what you're teaching and what you're publishing and what the market needs to consume, and so none of those things work together. But nobody said you were a great teacher. You got to work on that and nobody has time for that, so you get some bad teachers in the front of the classroom. You have to tell me why are you at this crypto conference? Because I'm into crypto. What does that?

Speaker 1: 41:38

mean You're into crypto. You've invested money. I'm into crypto. What does that mean? You're into crypto. You've invested money. I'm glad you asked. I'm glad you asked I do have some cryptocurrency. What's interesting is OK, I'm going to tell the story. I'm here in my homeboy Mike's house. Mike is going to Bible study with me, so the guy who runs our Bible study is like deep into crypto, Like has he made any money? I'm sure he has.

Speaker 2: 41:57

Have you seen the returns? I'm not in his bank account. Did he tell you he made any money? Yes, have you seen any result of an asset he's purchased from the money that he's made?

Speaker 1: 42:08

I believe so.

Speaker 2: 42:09

So the answer to that is no.

Speaker 1: 42:10

No, he definitely bought, listen, he definitely bought his daughter a Tesla for her birthday With his cryptocurrency money. That's what he said, but I'm not all in his family book. Like yo, you transferred this money from your crypto account to buy my like. I'm not. I'm not looking at it that way.

Speaker 2: 42:25

You know what crypto he bought. You know which one he purchased.

Speaker 1: 42:27

Too many for me to know he's. He's deep into it in a way that that I'm not, so I can't go on all his stuff, but anyway, part of my study before where he does like this financial education thing. Most people haven't gone into or jumped into it. But the cryptocurrency, like I have some Bitcoin, I have three cryptos that I do every month. Bitcoin is one of them, but the one that I'm actually, I would say, most invested in is called Helium, and so Helium is attached to an asset.

Speaker 1: 42:58

The real business for Helium is not the cryptocurrency. What this company is trying to do right now. The actual company is called Nova Labs, right, so they're trying to decentralize wireless and decentralize IoT. So, essentially, airbnb and Uber. I can take my Wi-Fi and connect it to this router that is on the blockchain and extends my Wi-Fi and makes it long five. So I'm building a decentralized IoT network, but the way that they got people to be a part of it, to decentralize it, like we had to reward them somehow, we don't have the. This is how these things work. We may not have the capital as a startup to give you shares at a company, so we create the cryptocurrency token and so, as you provide the service, you get a drip with a cryptocurrency. So that's how they're making their asset with the actual, and so the one that, like I said, the one that I'm-.

Speaker 2: 43:50

That sounds decent.

Speaker 1: 43:51

Yeah. So I am very aware of you do not want to invest like Dogecoin. Like I got like $5 in Dogecoin because Dogecoin was 0.00000000001 cent. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not. It's a meme coin, it's meant to be fake and so I'm not into those types of things. What most interests me is, like the possibilities for blockchain technology. So I think about it like this like you're a scholar, you publish articles. Once you publish the article, you don't get no benefit from that. It's done. But if the article was on a blockchain and let's say, there was a token, like let's say, your article was an NFT, like artist, and now you can get like a drip of a token and maybe the value I should turn my book into an NFT. That's what I'm saying. Like, like, listen in my mind I'm going to be sued by my publisher.

Speaker 1: 44:40

You can't do that because it belongs to Harvard. Well, what I'm saying? I had a copyright, though.

Speaker 2: 44:47

Oh, you do. Oh, look at that, it's a copyright to me.

Speaker 1: 44:50

Listen, I'm going to ask you about that offline, because I'm turning my dissertation into a book and I have this thing like I don't want to go publish with an academic press because I don't get any of that. So I'm starting to figure out how do I navigate, creating this, this literature, this scholarship, but then I don't get any benefit from it long term and I'm not a.

Speaker 2: 45:13

Well, you know your benefit, though. This is what you have to think about. Your benefit, though, because you're part of the academy, your benefit is where you publish it, and where you publish it is part of your CV and that's part of how you keep your job and feed your family. So you know you get some indirect, direct benefit. You do.

Speaker 1: 45:31

Maybe I'll just be in greed, but I just feel like. I feel like there's a better way to create, especially with publishing articles where, okay, the publishing company's gonna get, they're gonna get their cut. But what if, for every time the article got read or downloaded, I got two cents?

Speaker 2: 45:49

Yeah, academics don't like money, so be careful with that. They don't like when you make money.

Speaker 1: 45:57

So, anyways, that's tangent. Dr Pope, I thank you for joining us. Aggie pride, hopefully I'll see you at homecoming one day and I'll bring my book, if you're going to be there, and I'll take a picture with you with the book in hand. All right, oh, wait a minute. There's one Q and A real quick. John says the book allowed him to reflect on my cases of fraud that he's seen in his career, and John is also a CPA, so good, john, I'm glad.

Speaker 2: 46:20

Thank you for your comment.

Speaker 1: 46:21

Thank you for listening to today's show. As I mentioned in the introduction, this episode is part of a special series featuring voices from historically Black colleges and universities. This is part of a larger effort to support the From A&T to PhD Endowed Scholarship at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, an effort that I co-founded with two friends of mine who are also on their doctoral journeys. If you would like to support this effort, please review the show notes to make a donation to the endowment. Thank you.