326: Fool Me Once—How to Avoid Accidental and Righteous Fraud with Kelly Pope

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Sometimes just showing that you're reading your mail. Maybe you didn't read it, but the fact that somebody else knows that you opened it before they did. If someone's defrauding you, the likelihood of them continuing it knowing that you're reading the mail may help stop it.

What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it.

Here we go.

Welcome back, Pivoters. Jenny Here we are in luck. Today we have such a special guest, Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope. She is a nationally recognized expert in risk forensic accounting and white collar crime research. She's an award winning educator, researcher, author and award winning documentary filmmaker. She's currently the Dr. Barry J. Epstein Endowed professor of Forensic Accounting at DePaul University in Chicago. She has a TED talk titled How Whistleblowers Shape History that has been viewed over 1.6 million times, probably many more even by now. And she's the author of a brand new book that we'll be talking about today called Fool Me Once Scams Stories and Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry. Kelly, welcome to the show.

I am super excited to be here.

I'm so happy to have you and you must feel this way because it's your passion. But once my antenna were tuned to fraud specifically, especially while diving in to prepare for this interview. It's like it's everywhere.

Everywhere.

It's all over the news. They're arresting crypto guys. There's the Sam Bankman fried ftx. There's the Trump indictment happening at the time of recording. I mean, it's everywhere.

Fraud never sleeps. As one of my colleagues loves to say, fraud never sleeps.

I have to give you kudos as well because while I was reading your book to prepare for this. There's a section on accidental perps, people who commit fraud accidentally. And in that moment, my stomach dropped and I realized I left something crucial off my tax return that I wouldn't have remembered were it not for reading this book. And it triggered something in my subconscious. We had just filed it early, ahead of the deadline, and part of me was like, oh, it's not that much money. Should I just leave it off? Which is not my style, but some part of the mind always will do that. And I go, no. Even if it's a $1000, like, file an amended return, pay the accountant for the extra time, do it right, because I would lose sleep every night if I knew that I knew and didn't fix it. So thank you for that.

Yeah, it spoke to you. That's a good chapter then. I'm glad to hear you say that.

I love how you titled the book after this adage. You know, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And I think what. What I find so interesting about your work is trying to parse out who commits fraud and why. But also, any of us can kind of fall for fraud or be caught up in fraud. So can you say more about that? Like just how susceptible any of us could be? It's not just these big splashy stories then.

That's the first message is any of us can commit fraud. And it's not this idea of it's them. It should be the idea that this is us. And when I was thinking about all of the interviews I've done, whether it's me visiting people or people visiting my class, what I've realized is all of the perpetrators or offenders I like to be respectful when talking about them aren't the same. Some people do, say, set out to defraud their organizations, and those are intentional perpetrators. But there are two other categories that helps the idea of this is an us type moment, and those are accidental perpetrators and righteous perpetrators. Not everybody is noticing an internal control weakness in an organization and attempts to exploit it. Sometimes you just stumble upon it. Sometimes, like you just said with your example, with your tax return, you realize, oh, I made a mistake. Am I going to correct it? Am I not? You probably could have not corrected it, but something would have been on your mind for a long time. And so I wanted people to. Maybe you don't identify with the Sam Bankman Fried or the Bernard Madoffs of the world, but you might identify with the people that are accidental perps or righteous perps. So let's explore that a little bit more. Same conversation. On the whistleblower side, there is this idea that whistleblowers are snitches or rats or tattletales. And when thinking about whistleblowers, yeah, vigilante whistleblowers fall into that category. And vigilante whistleblowers, we need them, we love them, we need to embrace them, because they are the people that are going to speak out, whether it has anything to do with their lives or not. They believe in justice, and they're going to open their mouths and tell and we want them. And you might not always want them right beside you, but you want them near. But these other two categories, accidental whistleblowers and noble whistleblowers, you might fall in those two categories because those people don't necessarily identify with being a whistleblower. They just feel like they're doing their job and they revealed something. I mean, why am I not supposed to if I'm a safety inspector and I realize that there's a safety protocol that's not being followed and I let my supervisor know, am I now a whistleblower? I was just doing my job. And so maybe you're not a vigilante, but you might be an accidental or a noble whistleblower. So that's really what I wanted the book to speak to. And, you know, it's funny, I was looking at some of the reviews on Amazon and there was one person. I always look for the negative reviews because I think it's great. So just reading more great stuff is that's not where the growth happens. But I was looking at some of the negative reviews and I saw someone say, well, I don't get the point. Well, the point is you could be a whistleblower or you could be a perpetrator. And really more on the perpetrator side, it's not, look at these felons. Look at the scum. You might make a decision that could lead you into one of those categories. So let's talk about that a little bit more.

I'm so fascinated by this because whether it's being a victim of fraud or getting caught up in the web of somebody gaslighting or a narcissist or any of these things is like, sometimes it can be quite subtle or it can be a slippery slope into something really blowing up. And it can blow up your whole life. I'm wondering if you can share. We were talking before we hit record about Keila, whose story you share in the book. And I think, oh, it's Such a painful illustration, but of somebody who genuinely is a good person in the world and is trying to do good and do right by those around her, but ends up having to pay all the consequences of falling down this road.

So Kayla is a person that's in the righteous perpetrator chapter. And her story really touched me because I am a married woman and I can understand the dynamics of trying to maintain the house or whether you're married, whether any type of relationship, you may understand what it feels like to keep home happy. And she.

Used power and privilege with inside of her law firm to open an opportunity to her ex husband. And she said, you know, you could be one of our vendors and you could do some of the photocopying work that we need done for cases. And there was no anti nepotism policy in her office. And we often refer to work to people that we've either worked with before or we've had some engagement. I might ask you, hey, Jenny, do you know of a good service that does browse? And you might say, oh yeah, my friend does it and you make the referral and you move on. That's sort of the nature of how a lot of businesses operate. And so Kayla said to her husband, she knew that he was needed employment. She was doing very, very well in her job and in her life. And having that imbalance between your spouse or your partner can make it hard at. So she said, well, maybe I could help him pull himself up. And he became a vendor for her law firm. Now, of course, she didn't think that it was probably going to be the best thing, but she didn't think it was an unethical policy. She didn't think it would lead to fraud. And unfortunately it did. For a while her husband was doing the work, but then he stopped doing the work and started submitting invoices for work that had not been done or I guess he had no plans doing. And that is what led to the problem. So it started off as something very innocent, I think, about an accidental perp story that was in my life. And I talk about this in the book where I bought a handbag from a designer in California. They sent me one, and then the next day a second one came. And I could have kept it. I only ordered one, but now I have two, so what do I do? And I started saying, hmm, I guess I could keep it, I guess I could sell it. I guess I could sell it and pocket the money, but would that be right? And I asked a group of people, what would you Do. Every last one of them said, you know what? I would sell it. It's not your fault.

Right.

They sent you an extra bag. But if I had done that, if I kept it, I would be entering into that accidental perpetrator category. And what if it became a habit of me doing these types of frauds with retailers? I mean, it could have started a pattern, but sometimes it's simple. And so what I wanted to do in the book is make fraud relatable and let you realize as a reader that there are so many situations that present themselves to us. So, again, this idea that this is us, this is not a them type situation, fraud can happen and be perpetuated by any of us.

Now, in Kayla's story, she ended up having to serve time in prison. How did that come to land on her? What was her piece of it that led to her being put getting a prison sentence? And not just her husband, who started doing other bad dealings on his side. He also had consequences, but hers seems particularly severe.

Well, Kayla was the one in charge. So when her husband was submitting these invoices for work that had not been completed, she was the person that approved them. The information ended up being in her review. She had oversight over it. So that's how she ended up getting pulled into it. Now, to make a really long story short, her husband was arrested for another crime that he committed. I won't tell you all the juicy stuff because you got to read the book, but he was arrested for another crime. And when law enforcement started looking into his life, they noticed that her husband is deaf CEO of this photocopying company. And then they started to also notice, well, he's been receiving, you know, millions from this company. And then they noticed that this big time law partner was affiliated with this company and that was the spouse of the person they arrested. So, you know, it's a big feather in the district attorney's cap to get a big time corporate attorney that's involved in something wrong. That's a big deal to find someone that's engaged in a wrongdoing. So that's how the roads led back to Kayla.

Thank you for sharing. You say specifically as it relates to business owners, but I truly think this could be any of us, that busyness is a victim hallmark, especially among clients who are laser focused on their business or not remotely interested in accounting. Tell us why busyness might make us particularly susceptible to being a victim of fraud.

Sure. And when you're busy, you either cut corners, you relax internal controls, or you don't Pay attention. Sometimes the major and oftentimes the minor details. I think about myself when I'm busy traveling for a week. I don't always look at my mail. I don't go through my spam folder and see what email should have landed in my inbox but ended up in my spam folder. You know, there are things that you don't do when you're busy and when you promote that you're busy, sometimes you can make yourself a target. So although we might feel like we're really important if we're busy, it's hard to keep up with a lot of the processes that we put in place when we're busy. Say you have a startup and you need to hire a director of sales and you need this person yesterday. And because you need them yesterday, because business is going well, you're busy, you're out there selling, you might say, oh, this person looks good on paper. And you may not do a background check because you need them now. Busyness and everyone should always do a background check on anyone that you hire. But again, you sometimes relax some of those control that you put in place because you're just not focused on it. So busyness is not our friend. Also not our friend from just a mental health perspective as well, right?

And just going back to even my tax return, let's say I'm busy and the accountant sends it for review. And I'm so busy and overwhelmed by life and I hate taxes. I have sorophobia, whatever that word is, and I might just approve it without even looking at the return. But then if there's a mistake, I'm on the hook.

When you have more time, you're going to review it closer, right? Yes, but when you're busy, things fall through the cracks.

Everyone should read Fool Me once while preparing your taxes so that your subconscious too will trigger.

Trigger a reminder when you get an Amazon package for your neighbor, right? And you're like, ooh, I think I know what this is. Am I gonna give it to my neighbor? Oh, they can wait. Now, of course we wouldn't do this, but you might think about it. So yeah, it'll get to you. Read the book, it'll get to you.

We'll be right back just after this.

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I want to ask you about two sides of a coin. On the one hand, you say we regularly miss the red flags that are swatting us in the face. And on the other hand, fraudsters, especially the intentional fraudsters, often send subconscious messages. So in your documentary, which was fascinating among the woman who defrauded an entire town for decades, her horses, you point out, were named things like she scores. Be careful who you invite. She's sending messages through the names of her horses subconsciously, probably, maybe intentionally poking at everybody. But then we also suppress red flags. Like, even in Kayla's case. I wonder if you've asked her, but I wonder what tiny little signals got sent to her along the way. Why is it that we miss them so regularly?

Great question. And we miss them always because once we've established trust with someone, we allow everything. And then we don't want to believe the bad. You know, we've developed a culture of I only want to hear good news. Every day is a great day. I'm when, you know, I want to live my best life every single day. And so we don't want to pay attention to anything that disrupts those happy feelings. And so I think the trust and just not wanting to hear bad news is several reasons why we miss those red flags you talked about in the documentary. The names of Rita's horse. Be careful who you invite. I found a penny. She scores. Now, I found out when I was doing the work that there is a reason why horses are named the way they're named. Like there's a. Some type of legacy. And the horse that births the other horse, I just found it very interesting that they were all named that way, alongside of this woman embezzling millions and millions of dollars. I just thought it was hilarious.

Yes. And as the town was falling short on their budget by those exact millions year after year.

Absolutely.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah. I love that you picked up on that clue as a great forensic accountant would.

So, you know, I'm an accounting professor, and I am a big proponent of everybody, no matter who you are, needs to take an accounting class, A basic principles of financial accounting class, so that you can read a financial statement and you can understand why somebody might want to make some of the decisions that they might make. Why would you want to overstate revenue? Why would you want to understate expenses? Why would you want to overstate assets? Why would you want to do some of those things? You'll learn that in a basic accounting class. But people don't like talking about accounting, and we don't like talking about money and numbers. And so when you find somebody that is really good at it, you tend to empower them. When we're talking about the Dixon fraud, there are so many people that believed and trusted that Rita knew more than they did, and they would never feel comfortable and asking a question because you didn't want to embarrass yourself. In actuality, you have to get rid of all that and just ask the question. But this is why I believe everybody needs an accounting class.

That's great advice. So all of us, that we got to eat our spinach. Got to take that accounting class.

That's right.

I think I tried once and, oh, my gosh. It's like my mind doesn't work very well that way with the balancing, I swear.

No, it does. It does.

Oh, my gosh.

We'll do a class together. I got you.

Maybe we can take extended learning through you. I did start in high school. I started an I love math club because I felt so bad at math and I hated it that we would all meet at lunch and have pizza and the teacher would help us with our homework. It was my ironic play trying to make it fun. I heart accounting.

Our next episode, we're going to do an intro to accounting class on the podcast.

That would be such a gift. Oh, my goodness. That would be amazing. Thank you. And what you said about, look, someone like me feeling less confident in this area or I'm slower, it takes me longer. And then feeling less confident also leads to, like you said, just that feeling of, I'm allergic. Wanting to avoid it a little bit. Ignorance is never bliss.

Never.

Even the smartest people, like the Theranos, investors are luminaries, brilliant people. The fdx, all the people who covered FDX in the media, so many of them said after the arrest, he always talked so fast and everything seemed so complicated, and he was so smart that none of them wanted to look dumb asking those questions.

Busyness and complication is another Complication is another one. Things are not always as complicated as they should be. And there are Things that I could say, I could have written the book from the perspective of, let me use generally accepted accounting principles, generally accepted auditing standards, let me use terminology that no one on the planet would get. But it would make me sound really, really smart and no one would understand it. It would be very complex. Unless you were a CPA or you can talk in simple terms and if you talk in a simple way, people can ask more questions and they can easily understand what you're doing. He didn't want that. So busyness complication, those are sort of red flags because some things should be easy to understand. If you think about it, we think about how financial statement fraud sometimes happens. If you're saying that your sales are going up and because people are buying your product, that means that your inventory should be going down, right? So there are things that you can look at on a financial statement and say, hmm, well you said this year, you said we were doing really well. Like we increased sales by 30, 40%. Well, why is our inventory flat? If we sell books and we sold 30% more books, then shouldn't our inventory be down 30%? Like there's just things that you can ask if you have a basic understanding and most of the time it should make sense.

And you even have given examples of business owners who if they had just opened the mail, they would have caught it. Or in the case of the City of Dixon, if they had just asked one more follow up question about a certain bank account, they could have figured it out. So it's often that people were kind of one tiny step away. They wouldn't have needed to get buried in a deep, complex financial statement. It was one tiny step.

Absolutely. Something that's completely unrelated to what we're talking about. But you'll get the point when I say it, when I go in my kids rooms, they know that at any given time mom can come in their room, mom can go through my drawers, Mom's been in my closet. Sometimes I just let them know that I've been there so that, you know, don't come in here and try to hide anything because I will find it, I will do spot checks, I will come in your room. And so thinking about what business owners and those examples that I listed in the book, sometimes just showing that you're reading your mail, maybe you didn't read it, but the fact that somebody else knows that you opened it before they did, if someone's defrauding you, the likelihood of them continuing it, knowing that you're reading the mail may help stop it. So a lot of the business owners that I talk about in the book, they completely took their eye off the ball when it came to their finances. They never looked at their bank statements, they never logged on and looked at it electronically. They never looked at the transactions coming out of that debit card. When people parted with the company, did that corporate card, that credit card, did it stop? Did the charges stop? Did you close the account? Just basic things that we can do to stop fraud from happening to us. And these are important things if you have a small business.

You also share the fraud triangle created by criminologist Donald cressy in the 50s that might help us realize some of the ingredients that are present when, especially with intentional fraud, it seems like, but maybe even accidental. Can you share more about the fraud triangle?

So the fraud triangle is made up of three components. Opportunity, pressure and rationalization. And what I've been fascinated with for years is how we rationalize fraud. How we can tell ourselves this is okay or this isn't okay. In a recent research paper I was reading, and I didn't write this, I was reading, talked about, just like there's the fraud triangle, there's a whistleblower triangle where a whistleblower is going through a similar decision making process. How do they rationalize it? What is their pressure and what is their opportunity? The fraud triangle, the experiences of deciding to fraud is very similar to the experiences of deciding to whistleblower.

So I'm curious to dig in a little bit. Opportunity, pressure and rationalization. It almost seems like we're missing you added complication or, you know, things seeming overly complicated or trust. So tell me about why these three specifically.

Well, what I think Tracie was trying to understand or help us understand is that all frauds can really be explained by these three things. I think it's a nice model because if you think about any scenario, I'll take my own purse example. So what was my opportunity? My opportunity was, well, I ordered a purse and it came. The second purse came to me. So I had an opportunity to steal. What's my pressure? Well, maybe my pressure here was a little bit minimal because I didn't have to keep it. I didn't need a second purse. I didn't need two purses of the same thing. But maybe the pressure was I needed to give a gift to a friend. And now here it is, right?

The birthday is tomorrow or you're busy.

Right? Because I'm busy. Right. So now I don't have to give my best friend. I have to go to the mall and find her something. Here it is. And I didn't even have to pay for it. Bingo. And then the rationalization. Easy. It wasn't my fault. I didn't ask for it. It was them. They sent it to me. So I think it gives us a way to understand of how basic fraud or even complex frauds work. What I wanted to offer was more of an understanding of the rationalization by different perpetrators, the rationalization by different whistleblowers. And so that's what I feel as though my model extends Kressy's work.

Yes, absolutely. And I love how specific you are about the key players in each of these arenas, that there are three types of perpetrators, three types of prey, three types of whistleblowers, at least four actually.

Of whistleblowers, because the crossover category, which is super important too, when perpetrators, mostly intentional perpetrators, crossover to the whistleblower category. So we had to give a place for the crossovers.

Yes, like, you know, a mobster. Right. Who turns to get less of a sentence or something. Yeah.

And, you know, we might call that person a snitch. I call that person a vigilante whistleblower.

We'll be right back just after this.

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I want to return to the red flags because I just think it's so easy to miss unless you train yourself over time to listen to ever more discerning signals and intuitive clues. I mean, you study all this, but how have you trained your intuition over the years to spot it? Could be fraudsters, but could also just be People that give you a weird vibe. I'm just curious, like how you've built this muscle.

So what I've done is I try to keep things simple. I try to not overcomplicate things. Think about if you have gotten an email that seems odd, oddly toned from somebody that you know really, really well. So say it's from my department chair who is really, really nice, but she sends me an email that seems aggressive and something unlike her. Follow that, Kelly. It's probably not her, it's probably someone impersonating her and then sort of read the tone. Are they asking for something that she's never asked from you before? Pay attention to your gut. Because there's so many times I think that we suppress those feelings, but it's telling us something. So I've just learned to just keep things simple. For example, if someone reaches out to me on LinkedIn and they don't have a picture and they have zero followers and yet they're supposed to be a professional name, I've heard, but there's no picture and no followers. I'm not clicking on you because I think it's something that may be fraudulent. So just keep some of the cautions that you know, they seem self explanatory, but keep those top of mind because they can help you. And some of it is basic, but we still suppress it too frequently.

I feel like one reason is also flattery. And what's coming to mind as you were talking is when there was this fraud thing happening out of India where they were contacting professors around the world or inviting them for some residency at Harvard, it was very complicated. I believe the New York Times covered it. I'll have to find the link. But who doesn't want an email saying you've been picked and it's Harvard or even for me, my 20s dating, it's like somebody wants me.

Wow.

And then all of a sudden the fantasy or the flattery obscures the flags that can happen.

But even what they're talking about, why would someone pick you? How would you think the most prestigious university on the planet is going to pick you without submitting a cv, without an interview, without letters of recommendation? I mean, why would that be? Why would that make any sense to you?

Yeah, and I don't know, I think there was some complex process around it. But one of the things you said that made me laugh is the business world is filled with grandiose narcissists. It is. You know it's true. Yes, I do. And I think about this all the time. Because sometimes I'm sure we all, in our respective industries, you see people who are super successful every now and then, like, you get to know them and you're like, oh, this person's a complete sociopath. They have no empathy. No wonder. Like, they don't care who they step on to advance. And so, unfortunately, there are many people very high up across every industry who just could care less. You know, other people.

There's something to be said for the characteristics and qualities that you need to make it and that you need to survive. Leading large groups of people being to think about it, right? Who is smart enough to think that they should be the President of the United States? There's something a little bit wrong with you if you think that about yourself. I mean, come on. And so we all are, to some degree, narcissists. We all are. We all are, to some degree, overconfident. We all are, to some degree, arrogant. Do we manage it? But we all are to some degree those things. Because if you're too nice, if you're too trusting, if you're too anything, it's really hard to survive in the business world.

How do you think it is then, that when it seems like fraud is happening before our very eyes, we suppress it? And thank you for everything you're saying. Makes so much sense. But I'm thinking of Trump, like, almost no matter your politics, obviously some people love him. And I don't even get overly political on this show, however, just his business dealings over the years, seeing his tax returns go public, knowing Trump University, there are certain things that for some reason someone like Trump, it persists even when it's so obvious and in the face of the entire country. But then someone like Kayla is paying really severe consequences. And then the other one that comes to mind is it's different from financial fraud, but like, you know, the Harvey Weinstein's of the world, where they have this whole contraption around them of assistants who know what's happening, it's right in front of everyone's face, and it persists. Like, it's just so crazy to me that these things can be happening so out loud and they continue while other people have a $500 tax return mistake and pay through the roof.

Yeah. When we think about Trump and people like Trump, Trump exudes a level of success that all of us strive for. We can disregard and put aside all the bad because he's reached a level of success that we all think we want. If you think about social media, all social media does is profile and promote how successful, how wealthy. That's all that it's about. When you have people that have been able to exchange on success and wealth for a very long time, they have power. And when you have power, you can get away with a whole lot of things. In Kayla's situation, although she was successful, I don't think she had the power dynamic shifted. And so she was not above the law like some people have been able to reach. So you talk about Harvey Weinstein. He was able to reach a level of being above the law. And so there were so many people that enabled him to be above the law that it was hard for someone to catch him for a very long time.

Even in Rita's story, with defrauding the town for decades, as you say in the book, it's like she lived fat and happy for decades and then got off early.

And with Breida too, you know, she was doing a job that nobody wanted to do. Nobody wants to be the comptroller. Nobody wants to manage spreadsheets and money like no one wants to do that. And she was the person that did it, and there was no one else. So that gave her a level of power and privilege that she was able to exchange for a very long time. You know, I'm sure people question, gosh, why does somebody that works for the city own 400 horses? Doesn't that seem weird? Or why does somebody that has a full time job able to take four months off of unpaid vacation a year? Isn't that odd? Yeah, it is. But it's Rita, and we need Rita. And Rita does something that none of us want to do, and she does it well. So let's just keep her happy. Power. You're sort of above the system now. And so she exploited that.

And she also had more tenure than even the mayor. So the mayor kept turning over while Rita was always there. So in a way, she became the most tenured as well.

Yeah, she became trusted. You needed her.

Yeah.

It makes it easy. It makes it easy. So be careful with who you empower.

You might have said this in the book, but did you consider seriously going into the FBI? And I never knew they had accounting fields until my friend who was an accountant applied. But did you consider it? How did you decide to go a different way?

There was like an FBI citizens program, like, where you sort of learn what they do and they inform the public on things that they want the public to know about the bureau. And I did that program, but I never thought about working full time because I've always loved the classroom I mean, I feel like I get my energy from the classroom. I mean, even with writing the book, the stories and the inspiration really came from teaching students and being committed to their growth and really expanding that to just sort of being committed to other people's growth. And so the classroom, I feel like, makes me better at everything I do.

Speaking of the classroom, I'm dying to know, what did you do your dissertation on?

My dissertation was on the ethical decision making of accounting students. So I gave them various scenarios on how they would reason through and wanted to compare if accounting students were more ethical or unethical than other majors. So this was a long time ago, but, you know, I should reread my dissertation. You just gave me some inspiration.

And what did you discover?

Yeah, what I found was in comparison to other disciplines, accountants were traditionally, if not more ethical, equally as ethical as others. Accountants tend to be rather conservative and less to be risk takers. So I wasn't necessarily surprised. I almost probably wanted to find the opposite. They were more unethical, but I didn't. Thank goodness I didn't find that.

That's such an interesting study too. And then to see across professions.

Yeah.

And I wonder if it does change if the sample population were college students because it seems like people, like you said at the beginning of this conversation, it's small steps sometimes that escalate. So. Oh, you just skim a little off the top here and then a little there. So it's also like after they graduate, they either could be a fork in the road of whether they continue conservative, fully above board, or whether they start making little exceptions that lead to the big ones.

All of us make small steps and that's the reflection, the self reflection that I want people to take away when they have these book experiences. We all make small steps. How many are you going to make? How are you going to call yourself on it on your own? And hopefully they don't become too big because if they do, I will find you and I'll do an interview or do a movie about you.

Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much. So we have, our homework is take an accounting class.

Take an accounting class, yes.

And is there any other next step or experiment you'd want to leave people with?

On my website and it's kellerichmondpope.com if you go to my website and go to games and click to the bottom and you'll see the Fool Me Once fraud experience. It's a game I created that tells you you go through these different scenarios and it'll tell you, if you were ever to be a perpetrator or what type of perpetrator would you be? And if you were ever to be a whistleblower, what type would you be based on the archetype system that's created in the book? So your homework, Jenny, is to go and do the game and report back. Are you an intentional perpetrator? Are you an accidental perpetrator? Are you a righteous perpetrator? And same on the whistleblower side, Jenny. Are you a accidental whistleblower, a noble whistleblower, or a vigilante whistleblower? It'll tell you.

Okay, we'll find out. See, I love how you're making us all uncomfortable to say. This could be you. This is you. This is us.

This is us. That's right.

What a twist. Mm. Oh my goodness. Well, Kelly, this was such a treat to chat with you. Thank you. You've saved me from like many stomach turning moments of IRS letters already. So you've done your good deed as far as I'm concerned. And thank you, really. It's a great book. It's totally accessible for everyone who's listening. Like, I love the way you wrote it and approach this topic. And thank you so much for being with us today.

Thanks so much for having me. This was so much fun. Oh, and the last piece of homework. Go get the book and read it. Of course, that's the last piece of homework.

Absolutely. It's called Fool Me Once Scams, Stories and Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry. Thank you Kelly. Thanks so much everybody for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for PivotList, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode and@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always?

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