Category Archives: Scholarly Pursuits

Spotlight on Research by DePaul Business Faculty

“My hope is that by humanizing fraud, I can make it more relatable and approachable for people to understand,” says Professor Kelly Richmond Pope of her new book, “Fool Me Once.”

“Anyone can be victimized by fraud, commit fraud or report fraud. No one is immune. I’ve seen so much over the past 20 years and wanted to offer something from the research that people can use,” says Professor Kelly Richmond Pope, whose new book, “Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry,” was published by Harvard Business Review Press in March 2023.

Pope, the Dr. Barry Jay Epstein Professor in DePaul’s School of Accountancy & MIS, is a nationally known forensic accounting expert who has spent the last two decades researching fraud and white-collar crime. Her book is part memoir, part accounting and part fraud analysis, detailing Pope’s extensive research into what makes fraudsters, their victims and whistleblowers tick.

Her book introduces a fraud archetype framework that can assist with analyzing fraud cases. The framework posits that there are different types of perpetrators, whistleblowers and “prey,” as Pope calls them.

Perpetrators can either be accidental (unknowingly committing fraud by simply doing their job or following orders), intentional (purposefully committing fraud) or righteous (committing fraud for the purpose of helping someone, in a Robin Hood sort of way).

Whistleblowers, meanwhile, can be either accidental (unintentionally discovering fraud), noble (coming across fraud but turning a blind eye) or vigilante (seeing something and saying something; these people believe in true justice no matter the circumstance).

“Understanding these types of perpetrators through the years has really impacted my emotions,” Pope says. “I can empathize with the accidental and righteous perpetrators and, yes, even though these people still go to jail, understanding their reasoning is really important. In my book, I argue that all three perpetrator categories can exist in your organization, therefore knowing these categories can assist in developing an organization’s internal controls.”

The categories also serve another purpose: helping people see themselves. “My hope is that by humanizing fraud, I can make it more relatable and approachable for people to understand,” she says. To this end, the book includes a virtual game people can play — Fool Me Once Fraud Experience — to see what type of perpetrator or whistleblower they might be if they were to become one.

Pope is not new to virtual games that aid in learning. She is an innovative educator who created a game-based e-learning platform called Red Flag Mania, which she uses to advance student learning in forensic and investigative accounting.

Pope is also a filmmaker who produced two documentaries on fraud, “Crossing the Line: Ordinary People Committing Extraordinary Crime” and “All the Queen’s Horses,” the latter of which she says was the inspiration for her book.

“Fraud can happen to any one of us,” Pope says. “The more aware you are of your own weaknesses, the more likely you can protect yourself from falling victim to it.”

A recent study co-authored by DePaul business professor Pavel Savor has found that some banks potentially use alternative ways to pursue political influence.

In 2008, Countrywide Financial, once the largest mortgage lender in the United States, was embroiled in a scandal that caused banks to rethink how they pursue political influence. For several years, Countrywide Financial offered loans with low interest rates and other benefits to members of Congress, congressional officials and directors at the U.S. government-sponsored mortgage financer Fannie Mae. After the Countrywide affair was revealed, banks implemented stricter rules around their dealings with politicians, but a recent study co-authored by a DePaul business professor has found that some banks potentially use alternative ways to pursue influence.

The study examined whether banks offered better loan terms to firms that are connected to members of Congress, focusing on close elections, which the authors defined as those in which the victory margin was less than 5%. Their results showed that political connections ultimately led to lower interest rates on new loans to affected firms.

Christopher L. Keeley Chair in Investment Management Pavel Savor

“We were surprised that these banks, at least in our interpretation of the results, tried to ingratiate themselves with politicians by actually giving better loan terms to firms that appear to be supported by these politicians,” says co-author Pavel Savor, a professor of finance and the Christopher L. Keeley Chair in Investment Management at the Driehaus College of Business. “It’s not something I would have guessed when starting this project.”

Savor recently presented the study at several international conferences, where he says he heard from a number of former bank employees who mentioned their employers’ strict rules about dealing with politicians.

“It’s often said that one of the worst things that can happen to a bank is that one of their ex-executives becomes a regulator because that regulator now has to be especially worried about perceived possible conflicts of interest,” he says. “The other thing a bank can do is try to ingratiate itself with politicians by using some less observable means.”  

In addition to being treated more favorably by politicians and regulators, firms’ business partners—lenders, customers or suppliers—may also treat banks more favorably as a result of those connections.

“In addition to having direct benefits, these connections may also have indirect benefits, which illustrates the potential importance of political connections and influence on businesses, especially large businesses,” Savor says.

Other findings from the study include:  

• Loan terms depend on several factors. The authors found that the improvement in loan terms was much greater when politicians sit on important congressional committees (the effect becomes 244% stronger), when the firm is among the politician’s top campaign contributors (652% stronger impact), and when the firm and politician come from the same state (250% stronger impact). 
• Interest rate savings add up. The cost of offering discounts in the form of lower interest rates to connected firms is more than the maximum direct contribution firms can make to a political campaign. The amount of interest rate savings was found to be 10 times higher than what firms can contribute in any given year.  
• The 2008 financial crisis may have affected banks’ loan activities. Banks were more likely to offer lower rates and lend more frequently to connected firms if they were facing regulatory issues and during the period surrounding the passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a program enacted by the U.S. government to help stabilize the economy in the wake of the 2008 recession. The study showed that the impact of political connections was much stronger (625%) during this period, as it also was for banks that received government bailouts.  

By Jaclyn Lansbery 

Associate Professor Grace Lemmon | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

In diversity, inclusion and equity conversations, we need to include the idea that weight is a diverse attribute.”
– Associate Professor Grace Lemmon

While business organizations have made progress in reducing race, gender and religious discrimination in the workplace, bias against larger-bodied workers is a growing problem, according to Associate Professor Grace Lemmon (BUS ’06). With her DePaul research team, Associate Professor Jaclyn Jensen and Assistant Professor Goran Kuljanin (CHS ’05), she studies employees who suffer from weight-based bullying at work, as well as those who mistreat them.

“In the past decade we’ve seen great increases in stigmatization toward those with larger bodies,” says Lemmon, a management and entrepreneurship faculty member. “People in larger bodies are not offered jobs at the same rate, even though they have the same qualifications as someone in a ‘normal-sized body.’ Larger-bodied people are not offered promotions as frequently and are downgraded on performance reviews.” The cost is both economic and psychological, she adds. “Mistreated workers lose professional confidence. They stop using their voice and leaning into challenges at work.”

Lemmon and her research team surveyed 2,000 self-identified larger-bodied employees, and 89% reported mistreatment at work because of their size. “They experienced a range of aggressions—people swearing at or insulting them because of their size, withholding critical resources or expressing an insult wrapped in a comment, like saying, ‘Have you ever thought of having a salad for lunch,’ Lemmon says. Holding a leadership position offered no protection from mistreatment; the intensity of bullying increased as a person gained leadership status.

The research team also studied the motivations of perpetrators of weight-based mistreatment. Lemmon thought it would be difficult to get respondents to self-identify as perpetrators. The contrary results astounded her: “Ninety-two percent said they had a negative thought about a co-worker’s body and acted on it within the last six months.” Perpetrators, she adds, predominately justified their behavior in two ways: “‘it’s going to sting, but this person needs to hear it,’ and ‘I have a right to express my opinion.’”

After accounting for decrements to performance, engagement and mental health associated with weight-based mistreatment, Lemmon concludes that organizations cannot ignore this issue. First, organizations must acknowledge weight-based mistreatment is happening even if it isn’t a typical complaint, Lemmon says.

She notes that only a tiny fraction of mistreated larger-bodied people formally report the infraction, overwhelmingly due to shame. She further advises, “In diversity, inclusion and equity conversations, we need to include the idea that weight is a diverse attribute and deserves as much protection as other attributes. Finally, we need to call it out. When we see this type of predation at work, we need to stop normalizing it and, instead, speak up.”

By Robin Florzak

Professor of Economics Tony LoSasso | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

I’ve been really fortunate to have people help me along the way. I certainly would not have found my own way.”

— Tony LoSasso (BUS ’91, MS ’93)

As a DePaul undergraduate student in business, Tony LoSasso (BUS ’91, MS ’93) never thought about getting a master’s degree. Then, the late Ashok Batavia, who served as a professor of economics at the Driehaus College of Business, encouraged LoSasso to pursue a master’s degree at DePaul.

“It all started with DePaul and having people like Ashok push me in this direction, showing me that there was this direction, because I didn’t even know it existed,” says LoSasso, who was the first in his family to attend college. “I’ve been really fortunate to have people help me along the way. I certainly would not have found my own way.”

LoSasso rejoined the DePaul community in 2019 as a professor of economics and Driehaus Fellow. “I’m really excited to be back. It’s a tremendous thrill,” he says. A nationally recognized expert in health economics, LoSasso teaches graduate and undergraduate health economics courses. His award-winning research spans several dimensions of health and labor economics, health policy and health services.

Currently, LoSasso is working with the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business to launch a DePaul MBA concentration in health care markets and analytics, which is scheduled to debut in January 2021.

LoSasso’s interest in health economics was spurred by the federal health reform efforts of the 1990s, which occurred while he was earning a PhD from Indiana University Bloomington.

“I’m somebody who has always been interested in the policy side of things, and, of course, health economics is ripe with policy interest and relevance,” he says. “It was an untapped market for research, and then new and more data, and more powerful computers that could crunch data, became available.”

An area of particular interest for LoSasso is health insurance benefit design and the impact it has on health care utilization and health outcomes. One of his most recent research pieces, which he has yet to publish, utilized data to examine premiums within the health insurance market for small businesses.

In the classroom, LoSasso uses research to help students better understand the course material.

“I don’t think students often think that most of their faculty at DePaul are active researchers and scholars trying to push the boundaries of science,” he says. “So in addition to being informative about the subject matter, bringing my own research into the classroom can be of interest for students to get a sense of where research ideas come from, how they germinate and how they ultimately become published articles.”

By Jaclyn Lansbery

Steve Kelly, associate professor of marketing and director, Kellstadt Marketing Center

Mary Beth McCabe (MBA ’82) remembers learning a lot from the business case studies written about real brands—including EKCO kitchenware—that she tackled as a student at DePaul.

“We had to create our own product promotional characters, and our group created the character Ernie Ekco for some cooking products,” she recalls. The exercise helped her connect theory to practice and provided a useful framework for her to develop marketing strategies at work.

Today, McCabe, an associate professor of marketing at National University in La Jolla, Calif., and the owner of Sun Marketing in San Diego, develops business school case studies about marketing issues facing real companies. She was inspired to become a case writer by one of her DePaul teachers, Associate Professor of Marketing Steve Kelly, and the annual case competition he created, the Jacobs & Clevenger Case Writers’ Workshop.

This fall marks the 25th anniversary of the workshop co-sponsored by the Kellstadt Marketing Center, which Kelly directs. It started when the workshop’s original co-sponsor, the Direct Marketing Association, approached Kelly seeking strategies “to get more people interested in the field, which wasn’t being taught,” Kelly says. The workshop is now co-sponsored by Jacobs & Clevenger, a marketing agency co-founded by Ron Jacobs, past president of the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing.

Students often come to school with no idea of what they want to do. It’s usually their experience with companies—reading cases about them and then interning in that field—that helps them find their career interest.”
— Steve Kelly, associate professor of marketing and director, Kellstadt Marketing Center

The workshop is scheduled to convene at the annual Marketing Management Association (MMA) Educators’ Conference in Providence, R.I., in September. As he has done for every workshop, Kelly has lined up representatives from companies located in the host city to share information about their marketing issues with professors at the workshop. It isn’t difficult to find companies willing to participate, Kelly says, even though they get nothing in return. “These companies love to give back to the classroom.”

After the conference, the participating professors will turn the company’s presentations into case studies that challenge business students to develop solutions to the real-world situations described by the companies. Then, Kelly and DePaul marketing staff member Jessica Sanborn (BUS MA ’19) will arrange for the cases to be peer-reviewed by 20 or so professors, including DePaul faculty members. The three top-rated cases will be presented at next year’s MMA conference, where new cases will be developed. Kelly and co-editor Susan K. Jones, a marketing professor at Ferris State University in Grand Rapids, Mich., publish the cases in the biennial “IMC Sourcebook: Readings and Cases in Integrated Marketing Communications,” which professors across the country use in their classrooms.

Cases developed in the workshop bring contemporary business issues to life for students. One award-winning case co-written by McCabe, for example, puts students in the shoes of marketing executives at the electric carmaker Tesla by asking them to develop strategies for managing demand that outpaces production.

Kelly, who will celebrate his 45th year on DePaul’s faculty in June, says he enjoys managing the competition because case studies have a positive impact on students. “Students often come to school with no idea of what they want to do,” he says. “It’s usually their experience with companies—reading cases about them and then interning in that field—that helps them find their career interest.”

By Robin Florzak | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds