Successful Meetings - December 2007 - (Page 46)

Speaker Report > When Crime Pays ness, as it is probably more lucrative (and legal) than the rewards they reaped from their criminal activities in their former lives.” Fraud for Hire While serving nearly five years at Lompoc Correctional Facility in California for defrauding banks and investors out of some $100 million during the 1980s, Mark Morze joined Toastmasters International and a new, legal, career was born. “The associate warden called me in and said they had been Name: Mark Morze approached by professors at PepCrime: Fraud perdine who thought that there $3,000-$6,000, depending on seminar length might be an untapped resource of white-collar criminals at Lompoc,” says Morze of his first experience as a speaker. Morze and a few fellow white-collar inmates spoke to students about challenges they were likely to face in the real world, and Morze credits his continued success as a speaker in part to the fact that he admitted his guilt. “Mark has more than a story, he has examples, practical experiences, and a willingness to be open about his mistakes,” says Margaret Herriges, communications director for the Montana Society of CPAs. Morze spoke at the group’s annual Fraud Conference in September, where one member told Herriges that “he’s been to over 30 fraud seminars in the last five years, and that Mark’s presentation was hands down the best he’s ever attended.” Morze’s sessions include common-sense advice that is designed to teach people at every stage of the food chain to keep an eye out for fraud. “Stop looking for accuracy—what I tell you or show you will be accurate, but it might not be truthful,” advises Morze. “As I do my lectures, I point out that most of the people involved in my case never asked the follow-up questions—those are the ones that lead to the truth,” he says. “In real life, when you’re suspicious you ask those follow-up questions all the time”—to a boyfriend who may not really have been bowling last night, or a child who may have taken someone else’s toys. When news of a fraud breaks, “it never says ‘the fraud was discovered by the accountants.’ In fact, it usually says, ‘The accountants were shocked to learn that the information they were given was faulty,’ ” says Morze. “It always surprises me how savvy people, who graduated from excellent schools, can be so naive. “Look at a set of facts and ask yourself, ‘If this is totally false, what happens?’ Do a few pieces of due diligence. I always tell my students 99 percent of what they look into will turn out to be true, but it gives them a track record,” Morze says. “They are not required to do any of the things I tell them about, but juries and the public will expect it of them because it’s common sense.” Taking Them to the Cleaners Patrick Kuhse has been a fulltime, professional speaker for four years—the same amount of time that he spent as an international fugitive before turning himself in to authorities and beginning his incarceration in Costa Rica. He was transferred to a SUCCESSFUL MEETINGS Name: Patrick Kuhse Crime: Money laundering, bribery, conspiracy $7,500 46 mimegasite.com DECEMBER 2007 http://mimegasite.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Successful Meetings - December 2007

Successful Meetings - December 2007 Contents Editor's Note Special Report Research Industry Trends 2008 Meeting Events Planner Spotlight Websites of the Month Mouth for Sale Technology Talk Food & Beverage Pre-Event On Site Pre-Event Tools of the Trade Goodbye, Booth Babes Five Tips to Improve Your Golf Events When Crime Pays Office for Hire More Miles for Your Money Places & Spaces South Florida Biloxi / Mississippi Gulf Coast Fort Worth Monterey Beijing Gurus Special Supplement: Hawaii Island-by-Island Guide

Successful Meetings - December 2007

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