Whistleblower on the 28th Floor
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2021
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Financial expert Ray Dirks (played by Jeffrey Wright) exposed one of the biggest corporate crimes of all time - and yet he was the one who ended up in front of the Supreme Court.
Whistleblowers often face intimidation from those they bring to justice, but also face hostility from their co-workers, new employers, the authorities and even the public. Why are we suspicious of "tattletales" and what can we do to make vital whistleblowing easier?
Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin |
| 0:15.0 | Ray Dirk's was an insurance company analyst. |
| 0:18.0 | Equity funding was an insurance company. |
| 0:21.0 | The year was 1973. |
| 0:24.0 | The company's bosses were hosting Dirk's to lunch in their boardroom |
| 0:28.0 | high up in a Los Angeles skyscraper. |
| 0:31.0 | A mundane everyday event? |
| 0:34.0 | No. The air in the boardroom was thick with tension. |
| 0:39.0 | Ray, it's the 28th floor. |
| 0:42.0 | But don't worry, the windows are locked. |
| 0:45.0 | If that was a joke, Ray Dirk's wasn't laughing. |
| 0:48.0 | He'd heard those rumors about his hosts being linked to the mafia. |
| 0:53.0 | They'd have every reason to be glad he fell out of a window. |
| 0:57.0 | Equity funding's bosses had been perpetrating one of the biggest, most audacious frauds in corporate history. |
| 1:05.0 | And Ray Dirk's was on to them. |
| 1:07.0 | Because a few weeks earlier, the company had made a fatal mistake. |
| 1:12.0 | They had fired an employee who knew all about the scam. |
| 1:17.0 | That employee was called Ron Seacrest and he was furious. |
| 1:22.0 | He decided to take revenge, but who should he talk to? |
| 1:27.0 | Seacrest knew he had to choose carefully. |
| 1:30.0 | The fraud was so huge, so audacious, he feared that nobody would believe him. |
| 1:36.0 | Except, perhaps, for one man. |
... |
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