How Far Would You Go?

In the recent news, Bernie Madoff is being charged with 11 felony counts of fraud. Federal prosecutors estimated clients losses to be around $65 billion dollars, including fabricated gains. Madoff was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme which is an operation that pays returns to investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors rather than from any actual profit earned. Madoff made billions of money by cheating his clients of their money and even had $1 billion of his money in assets that were overseas such as a house in France that was worth $1 million dollars and had around $900,000 worth of furniture and paintings. Many of Madoff's clients went to his court trial to testify about their investments, watch a small clip of an interview with one of his clients here.

Not only did Madoff get in trouble but so did his accountant, and that raises the question of is fraud contagious? An article titled "Is Fraud Contagious" talks about the Madoff scandal and why people cheat. People that cheat and don't cheat both weigh the benefits and costs that can come from fraud but honest people see that the costs out-weigh the benefits. Personally, I don't believe I could ever cheat or commit fraud because the chances of getting caught are huge. Madoff starting scamming his clients in the 1990's and didn't get caught until now, but did he think that he could get away with stealing around $50 billion dollars from people? As an accounting major ethics play a huge role in my life because my clients need to be able to trust me with their finances and assume I will do the right thing. Embezzlement is a huge problem in my profession because of the amount of money that one person can handle and work with. My accounting teacher told us that her old job made everyone take a week off every two months or so, so that they wouldn't be able to steal money. That's a smart idea even though in a perfect society we shouldn't have to think that our employees would steal from us.
I believe that morals and ethics play a huge role in ones decision whether to cheat or be honest in their everyday lives. Would you be willing to cheat people of their money or would your ethics and morals overpower your urge to this horrible crime? How far would you go?