Four quick questions…
Earlier today I received an e-mail from a business student at USC. This student, who listened to my lecture in April, wanted to better understand some of the pressures, motivations, and influences that took me from a life of honor and dignity to the depths of infamy.
Specifically, I was asked:
1- What started this mortgage fraud trend? What is the first real component of white-collar crime?
For me, my willingness to lie was the first real first component of white-collar crime. I suspect it was the same for those who engaged in fraudulent mortgage practices. Without question, most men in prison, at one time or another, were untrustworthy and liars. The irony was that while living as the embodiment of deceit, I didn’t consider my actions as being inconsistent with self-perceptions of my essential goodness as a human being. “I was a big brother, a good son, sort of a good boyfriend,” I would tell myself, “I’m JP, I’m alright.”
2- While managing money were you Machiavellian?
Yes. In prison, while chilling in my upper bunk (10U), I read Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince. I knew it then. As an executive, I embraced Machiavelli’s suggestion that while living in a corrupt world, success required a person to master the art of deception. By lying and deceiving others I could get ahead, and getting ahead was what it was all about. I was too naive to understand that embracing Machiavellianism would augment my proclivity to mislead, dissemble, and embellish.
3- Were there any positives to living in prison? One positive—of the many– to wearing prisoners’ clothes were the catlike instincts I’ve developed to root out people who use treachery and deceit as a means to get ahead. In prison I read extensively on the subject—I still do. By default, I became a kind of cultural anthropologist, immersed in the study of felons—I still am. Frequently, I would sit in that large TV room at Taft Camp, listening to the outrageous stories my fellow prisoners would share. I grew to loathe those powerful inmates and their ilk pour poison into the ears of young malleable inmates. Worse, these men appear to be a paragon of virtue while disguising their calculating and beguiling ways. That knowledge, those experiences have helped me as I re-emerge back into the corporate world.
4- Are you more tolerant because you went to prison?
Yes, I am more tolerant. In prison, I realized that few of my fellow prisoners had the opportunities that I took for granted. Many endured struggles that I only read about or saw on TV. While I am more tolerant I am not tolerant of everyone. Last March, a student at Wake Forest University insisted that my not being tolerant of everyone means that I am intolerant. To tolerate everyone, I told the student, would guarantee the downfall of tolerance. To tolerate everything means we should tolerate Hilter or Madoff. I am not implying that those who fail aren’t deserving of tolerance or for that matter, forgiveness. Indeed, isn’t that what tolerance and forgiveness is all about?: giving it to those who need it most. I think so, however, one has to prove why they are deserving of a second chance.
Tags: bernard madoff, ethics, forgiveness, life in federal prison, Mortgage Fraud, taft federal prison camp, tolerance, USC, White collar crime
