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Meet the 3 kinds of people who are stealing your money | Kelly Richmond Pope

Big Think | October 2, 2025



Fraud is a $5 trillion “industry.” But not all its perpetrators look alike. Kelly Richmond Pope, a professor of accounting, breaks down who commits fraud — and why.

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When we think of someone who commits fraud, we think of people like Bernie Madoff or companies like Enron: intentional perpetrators of financial crimes. But other kinds of people commit fraud, too. Accounting professor Kelly Richmond Pope explains who else falls prey to the “fraud triangle”, and they might be even scarier than the big bads.

0:00 How does fraud happen?
1:00 Meet Kelly Richmond Pope
1:28 The Fraud Triangle
2:18 Three types of fraudsters
2:26 Intentional perpetrators
3:50 Righteous perpetrators
4:20 Accidental perpetrators
5:56 And then there’s Wells Fargo…

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About Kelly Richmond Pope:

Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope is the Dr. Barry Jay Epstein Endowed Professor of Accounting at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. Pope is a nationally recognized expert in risk, forensic accounting, and white-collar crime research, and an award-winning educator, researcher, author, and award-winning documentary filmmaker. She’s the author of Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry (Harvard Business Review Press, March 2023). Pope teaches managerial and forensic accounting both at the undergraduate and graduate level.

Written by Big Think

Comments

This post currently has 28 comments.

  1. @lephtovermeet

    October 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

    Literally all the major accounting firms require the Jrs actually doing the book work to magically change then reverse numbers to make books balance or get favorable returns for their clients. You literally can't not – you'll get let go, it's your literal job. Rainy day fund? Lol they pay subsistence wages for the first few years at least.

  2. @YoYo-gt5iq

    October 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

    "If you cant afford to quit….."
    This resonated with me. I regret getting the COVID vaccine, but had just bought a house and couldn't afford to lose my job. A few months later the 3 of us who got the shots were so sick we were bed-ridden for 2 weeks. The 2 younger ones who didn't? They were fine, despite being in a house with us taking care of them the best we could.

  3. @morgancarvalho4408

    October 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

    In the whistleblower part, what is wrong with society: Julian Assange, pretty much did everything to warn us, like Snowden, and look what happened. Its by making them as examples which is: no matter how brave and morally correct you are, your sacred quest to protect people, doesn't mean anything to us and you will get punished in front of the world, and the world will know that we are wrong by doing this, but… they will accept it, and to even mock society, we will even make some amazon show or Hollywood movie about their lives just to elevate the mocking to a whole other level.

  4. @simpsond7862

    October 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

    For over 20 years I tried to build a house in Jamaica I lost thousands of pounds during this period my mother died and we lost her share of her property,my father died and I lost my share of his property. Most of these problems involve lawyers and and the way they keep it going is to put fear into other lawyers so you can't fight any case because they won't take your case. That is only part of the story.

  5. @NUCLEAR154

    October 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

    💯 %corrupt Malta government staff, lawfirms, Notaries, Ndrangheta Mafia, where IDENTITY THEFT IS NOT ILLEGAL 😮CYBER SLAVERY is nationally rampant, every nationality spies, mafias,paedophile ponzi property title deeds scam, stalking 😅😅😅😅

  6. @colinmcintyre1769

    October 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

    See something say something is not how ive experienced the real world. I recomend being smart enough to understand the 1984 world we live in, play in the woods, and dont get so comfortable you rent the upstairs. 😢

  7. @adomelka

    October 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

    In my eyes a more general description of a righteous perpetrator would be of a person who felt it is justified to commit a fraud for some reason, it may be, as it is said in the video, to help someone, or if they felt they had no other choice, or if the perpetrator felt he was treated unfair in some way, so it could actually be subcategorized. And I wouldn't call the accidental perpetrator the actual perpetrator. If a person is misguided or manipulated into doing something then it's the manipulator who's the perpetrator, imo, though there may be situations where the the person knows he's doing wrong, then that's not an accidental perpetrator, he'd become what I'd call an unintentional perpetrator. The accidental perpetrator would most probably be a person who does not understand he is doing a crime.

  8. @danielledavis8580

    October 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

    oh I've been saying this since long before wells fargo. I have observed these kind of crimes (done by employees to avoid being fired) for the last 35 years. it's one of the largest motivators of crime, absolutely

  9. @Reigndoc

    October 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

    I used to work for BellSouth in the late 90s and early 2000s. So many of my co-workers abused FMLA because of the stress we were under to meet sales goals. So many of my friends were tapped on the shoulder and escorted out at 3PM. They were strategic and intentional. Seeing Security come down at 3PM put fear in us. I used to wonder how ppl were hitting their numbers, like blowing them out of the water. There were a lot of underhanded stuff going on and management would ignore it. Customers would call back in and ask about their orders, the rep would change the sales code to theirs and steal your orders. Ppl were getting fired for placing orders for things customers didn’t ask for. Why? Management encouraged this culture. I quit in 2003. It was too much stress and I had a conscious. I would get chewed out because I didn’t offer an elderly lady all of these features on her phone and she was just crying about not having enough money to pay her phone bill. I was not going to add to her stress and have to explain to her why her next bill was double. No way! I either quit my job, go see a psyche and get on meds like some did in the office, or be the unethical relentless no fs given rep who made her quota, received bonuses, and got to keep her job another month. I quit!! I can only imagine how it is now as the new company…there needs to be more regulations

  10. @garythoulouis2762

    October 2, 2025 at 11:50 am

    Sorry, but Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried were not intentional Fraudsters. Now, if you got that wrong what else did you get wrong? Are you trying to sell your book or do you really want to help? Because giving false information for gain is fraud.

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