What to do if you witnessed a Corporate crime?

Problem that I know too well.

If you are witness of a crime in your corporate environment, as long as you do not report it, you are accomplice. The law is very clear about this, and you can be charged for not reporting.

Now, there is reporting and reporting:

1) You have to go to your HR and report the crime, corporations like to think they are the one who have to decide to go to the authorities for not, but this is not accurate. The corporation may attempt to avoid damages for the crime they are responsible for. As long as they do not report it externally, Judges will give them full responsibility later on if more crimes happen and they did not report it to the jurisdiction they should have reported the crime to.

2) If you see the corporation taking immediate actions, you can decide that the corporation is taking care of it. Just know that you are not fully covered as long as it was not reported externally. State crimes and federal crimes have to be reported by the corporation to the proper authorities. Often, the federal offices will accept the tips and detail and will act or not on it. Just know that if the feds do not act immediately, they may have motivation that you can not understand, they may have a bigger picture.

3) The corporation is not acting on its problem, and attempt to tell you it is not a problem. Then, there is a federal system to help you, the whistle blowers laws. You can contact them directly:

https://www.whistleblowers.org/

When reporting crimes in corporate environment, just understand that you are doing the right thing, but in the mean time, you are going to be losing a lot of friends at work, many of them will tell you that you have betrayed them. What is important to understand is that you can not stay #silent, you have to report crimes when they happen. The people blaming you later on for reporting the crimes are simply people who have border line ethic, people who may commit a crime if the situation present itself on the front of them. If you have that kind of people around you at work, blaming you for stopping a crime, I personally recommend to change employment, you don't want that kind of people around you. You can decide to move inside the same corporation, or you can decide to change corporation and run away from a toxic culture.

Last advise, you can usually see corporate storms coming, and when it is coming, this is when you want to watch for it, and let people know that you are not going to compromise your ethic if the opportunity present itself. IF you see people avoiding you on that topics after, and actively putting distance between you and the activity they were planning, you know something is wrong. You can decide to be proactive, or leave. There are not real best known method here to decide what to do.

Little list of red flags:

1. People selling corporate property in any way without being part of a sell organization is fishy.
2. People attempting to collect competitors information aggressively are fishy.
3. People outspoken about bending corporate rules are fishy.
4. Internal mechanism like "bounties" for information are fishy.
5. Crime can be triggers because money/greed , or by politic and ambition.

What if the corporate legal and HR are on it?

• That is fairly easy to detect, they will tell you it is not a problem.
• The corporation may attempt to put you on a side track
• They may attempt to relocate you.

IF this happens, contact the whistle blower organizations, or the Silicon Valley foundation and we will help you to navigate this. We have awesome T1 lawyers on retainer.

Let's keep the valley clean!