“Once a fraudster, always a fraudster.”
It sounds like a simple phrase. But it’s more than that, it’s a cultural reflex baked into how we process wrongdoing.
Several factors contribute to this belief, including
- Headlines: It’s always a juicy story when someone who stole millions reoffends
- Recidivism rates: Interpreted evidence to back the belief
- It’s easy; it requires no self-examination
- Moral superiority
People who believe, “once a fraudster, always a fraudster,” can easily provide evidence to support their claim. But how are they viewing and processing that evidence?
A quick search yields many results regarding white-collar recidivism rates, ranging from 29% to 49.3%.
Even at the highest estimate, 49.3%, more than half haven’t reoffended. The math alone disproves the myth.
As a society, we don’t hear about that half because that half isn’t salacious.
In journalistic norms, “If it bleeds, it leads” represents the reality behind why the most gruesome and salacious stories capture the headlines.
And over time, those headlines don’t just shape our attention—they shape our beliefs.
“Scammer Does it Again” is more clickable than “Man Living a Quiet, Honest Life.”
“New Disease Kills a Quarter of Those Who Contract It” is way more likely to capture our eyes than “75% Who Contract New Disease Survive and Live Happy Lives.”
And that’s why it’s easy to believe, “once a fraudster, always a fraudster.”
It’s simple to stop at the 49.3% while ignoring the 50.7%.
The percentage majority doesn’t require us to examine our own capacity for change and then extend the grace, compassion, and understanding that others can also change.
There’s a part of each and every one of us that wants to be better than someone else. The 50.7% doesn’t activate our desire to feel morally superior, so we ignore it.
An unexamined life is a life of constant comparison; it’s a balance scale we want to tip in our favor.
I’m not here to convince anyone to change their beliefs, but I would invite anyone to examine them.
I still remember the moment I violated my inner voice and changed the trajectory of my life.
I was sitting at the dining room table, seconds away from committing fraud. My finger hovered over the mouse; I only had to hit the “send” button to initiate the scam.
My heart whispered, “stop. Don’t do this. This isn’t the way for you.”
I heard it.
And I did it anyway.
The fear of being seen as “less than” outweighed my moral compass. I chose short-term relief and sacrificed long-term peace and freedom.
Every domino that fell from that moment landed on one person: me.
My arrest and subsequent prison sentence was, to date (knock on wood), the most life-shattering experience of my life.
The shame I experienced for the person I allowed myself to become, the decisions I made, and the pain I caused those around me led me to plan how I’d take my own life.
There was no one else to blame, no fingers to point; all responsibility landed squarely on my shoulders.
I, and I alone, was the cause of everything in my life I said I hated.
I stared the worst version of myself in the eyes, and I wanted him dead.
Imagining how you’ll end your life is the true hell of rock bottom.
For anyone who believes, “once a fraudster, always a fraudster,” I invite you to look at your own life.
Have you ever experienced something like prison?
Have you ever experienced something so life-shattering?
Have you ever carried the soul-crushing burden of knowing you’re the devil in the hell of your own rock bottom?
If not, you will never comprehend self-destruction and its capacity for change.
Unless we’ve experienced for ourselves what we judge others for (not just crime, but life as a whole), we will never fully understand.
To pretend otherwise is to be utterly unaware of oneself.
We may have an idea, and we may even exhibit empathy, but we will never feel it viscerally in our bones and our hearts.
Experiential wisdom eclipses intellectual knowledge.
Therefore, we will never understand the capacity for change.
There is a massive nuance here that must be addressed.
Redemption is never guaranteed; the recidivism numbers prove that.
It’s up to the individual to see the capacity, stay open to it, and summon the willingness to seize it.
Redemption isn’t an easy journey, far from it.
It requires facing your worst self without flinching.
It demands extreme responsibility without excuses.
It calls for a level of courage most people will never be forced to find.
Maybe the ones who don’t rise to the occasion fall into the 49.3%. I can’t say, I haven’t spoken to all of them.
So, what if, instead of focusing on the 49.3%, we understand that 50.7% seized the capacity?
What if we choose to see what the headlines aren’t saying, and what if we choose to question our desire for moral superiority?
There’s a deep hidden cost of binary thinking:
We damage our humanity and our society when we’re so willing to apply one label or one belief to a group of people, not just those who have committed crimes.
When we make individuals “others” without self-examination, we’re letting ourselves off the hook.
But the truth is this: The more we “other,” the less human we become.
When we make our fellow humans “other,” we lose empathy; when we lose empathy, we lose what makes human connection beautiful.
Here’s the truth: “once a fraudster, always a fraudster” is a headline.
It’s a shortcut we take when we don’t want to imagine a fuller story. When we don’t want to ask harder questions. When we’d rather feel superior than feel connected.
But just maybe, we can learn to look beyond the headlines.
And when we do, we’ll see something else entirely.
Not a statistic. Not a stereotype.
A human being.
Trying.
Craig is a keynote speaker, reinvention architect, and author of “Blank Canvas: How I Reinvented My Life After Prison,” and a TEDx speaker with his talk, “How I Learned My Greatest Worth in Federal Prison.”
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