How to Avoid Going to Jail Under 18 U.S.C. For Lying to Government Agents
Without getting into the scope of the 1001 statute (I think they're probably mostly right about it), I just want to chime in with a nit about the example they chose:If you take a job at a health provider that you later learn is corrupt, and later knowingly transport false vouchers as part of your job while otherwise avoiding direct participation with the more overtly criminal parts of the enterprise, you are a criminal. What you're doing is wrong. Put into that situation unexpectedly, you must either quit, or immediately report your employer (and, presumably, then quit). You can't knowingly accept a paycheck from a criminal enterprise if doing so requires you to help carry out criminal actions. The law says that's criminal, but even if you don't care about that, so does the social contract.Are you less culpable than the owners? Sure, of course you are. But this article chose I think a really terrible example, one that creates a false sense of what it means for someone to be incidentally and unjustly swept up in a crime they themselves tried to avoid.We in this industry all need to be taking more responsibility for our individual actions and the net impact they have on society.