Petter Gottschalk

Whistleblowing Petter Gottschalk

Very few white-collar criminals are detected. They are able to commit and conceal their fraud to benefit their organization or themselves, and continue in their privileged professional positions as members of the elite in society. When rumors of misconduct and crime occur, white-collar offenders are often so powerful that nothing happens to them. Some are too powerful to detect, investigate, prosecute, and jail. Whistleblowers play an important role in detection. They detect crime signals and send messages to people who can do something about the situation. They may report internally to executives or auditors, or they may send messages externally to journalists or public authorities. After discussion of white-collar fraud in the perspective of convenience theory, this book moves into its core of fraud signal detection, detailing the key terms signal strength, signal alertness, pattern recognition, and personal experience. The book then presents four case studies where whistleblowers reported fraud suspicions. After whistleblowing, fraud examiners were hired to reconstruct past events in private internal investigations.