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Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

Coming to Grips With Guilt: A White Collar Felon

Miriam Schulman

Mark Faris, whose misconduct as vice president for sales at a reseller of network equipment landed in him jail for mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering, talked with the Center's Business and Organizational Ethics Partnership about his path from law-abiding citizen to convict.

Faris is touring several university campuses with Hank Shea, professor of law at St. Thomas University and former Department of Justice attorney. Shea has conducted similar programs with other white collar felons to show how basically decent people get into trouble.

Mark Faris's company, Interlink Communications, had been involved with Cisco Systems in a partnership to sell refurbished equipment. At one point in their partnership, Cisco began to pressure Interlink to drop or deemphasize its used equipment offerings. When Interlink declined, Cisco discouraged customers from working with Interlink, resulting in a 30 percent loss of top-line revenues.

Angry about this treatment, Faris stumbled into a scheme by which Interlink made requests for up-graded replacement parts, although the parts were not replaced. Instead, Interlink sold the new parts at a profit. By the end of the scheme, Interlink had defrauded Cisco of more than $400,000.

Faris told the group how his resentment over his company's treatment at the hands of Cisco had blinded him to his own misdeeds. Initially, he fought the indictment, seeing himself as David going up against Goliath and rationalizing his own behavior.

Eventually, in consultation with his family, friends, and pastor, he recognized his own arrogance and greed and decided to plead and work with the DOJ. Faris also described the traumatic effect of his incarceration on his family, and the difficulty of resuming a professional career being a conflicted felon.

Miriam Schulman is the communications director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Dec 1, 2011
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