As a young man, Justin enjoyed a distinguished athletic career in baseball. Through sports he had the honor of playing in three separate World Series tournaments, and he had the privilege of playing baseball for the Trojans at the University of Southern California.

Through baseball, Justin learned values of good sportsmanship, including honor, integrity, good character, and the importance of teamwork. Yet as has been the unfortunate case with so many others, those values and characteristics of good citizenship became less important with graduation from academia and advancement into the professional world. Once Justin’s career began, his values changed, with the need for personal development going to the wayside. Instead, a shortsighted craving for personal advancement motivated him, and earnings rather than excellence became his measuring rod for success. Although Justin earned a significant income through his career as an investment executive working at Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns and UBS, an incremental abandonment of social responsibility led him to disgrace and what should have been a sterling reputation.

Justin’s financial crime revolves around the responsibilities he had in overseeing a client’s hedge fund that later morphed into a Ponzi scheme.  Despite his suspicions of fraud, Justin encouraged the trading to continue. Instead of using his discretion as a force for good, to protect investor assets, Justin schemed with his colleagues and superiors to protect them from any potential liability.  Had Justin cultivated a stronger ethical code, embraced individual responsibility, and developed a sense of integrity, he would have had the courage to act appropriately.  Instead, only five years into his career, Justin had abandoned anything but lip service to the cultivation and development of a strong ethical center. As such, he remained silent to the fraud, thereby making him part of the crime, ultimately leading to his demise; 18 months of imprisonment soon followed.

Walt’s perspectives on white-collar crime are unique as he was involved in such a crime while working as a senior manager at MCI Telecommunications where he was responsible for the billing and collection of nearly $1 billion in monthly revenue for MCI’s carrier finance division. With a meritorious employment history, he, one member of his staff and a business associate outside of MCI began to perpetuate a fraud involving a few of MCI’s own customers. When the scheme was completed, there had been seven customers of MCI defrauded over a six-month period resulting in $6 million in payments to the Cayman Islands.

In January 2001, in cooperation with the Federal Government, Walt pled guilty to wire fraud and money laundering and entered federal prison shortly thereafter where he served two years. Audiences find his presentation to be a candid look at the motivations,actions and consequences of a white-collar crime. Walt holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from West Virginia University and an MBA from Mercer University. In the Fall of 2007, Walt and co-author Neil Weinberg (Forbes Magazine) introduced their book, Stolen Without A Gun: Confessions From Inside The Largest Accounting Fraud in History..the collapse of MCI/WorldCom.