January 18, 2018
White-Collar Crime: Tips to Protect Yourself
Sometimes, business can put you in a tight spot. You may want to get ahead or you might be coerced into helping your boss or coworkers. If you are an executive, you need to avoid behaviors that could unintentionally and unknowingly result in a federal criminal investigation. read our tips below but, more than anything, just use common sense.
3 Tips to Protect Yourself From White-Collar Crime
1. Emails Will Betray You
Anything and everything the prosecuting lawyer can get their hands on will be used against you in court. This means emails you sent and received many years ago will show up in any type of investigation about your involvement in a white-collar crime. Be careful of what you type to anyone using your email account, especially work. Any type of instant messages (i.e. gchat or imessage). Do not respond to any email that could be damaging. Important conversations just always be face-to-face or on a phone call.
2. Trust Your Gut
If you get a bad feeling about anything, it’s likely something fishy is going on. Not taking your gut feeling into account and finding out what’s going on and what the appropriate actions or measures to take are will end up making you look as bad as those behind the crime. If you are a corporate executive, you should know everything, especially when something is wrong. The best course of action is to trust your instinct, report it, and remove yourself from the situation.
3. Get Your Own Lawyer
Anything you say to the company’s legal team is going to be used to protect the company, not you. You need to be sure to get a lawyer for yourself whose sole purpose is to protect you and speak only to them about the alleged crime.