As someone who has recently been arrested for Los Angeles Medicare fraud (or insurance fraud, identity theft or another Southern California White Collar Crime), your life is in chaos right now. The arrest has terrified you, caused difficulties in your relationships, and perhaps even thrown your health out of whack. At some point within the next few weeks or months or years, you are going have to look in the mirror and try to come to terms with how you got into this position – being a Los Angeles white collar criminal defendant – and where you want to go from here with your life and your profession.
Looking objectively in the mirror is not easy for anyone in any circumstances. Introspection is a difficult skill, and it is a skill that we are generally not taught in school or elsewhere. Looking in the mirror objectively when we have committed something that society deems “wrong” or “awful” is even harder, especially if you have being living in a kind of self created delusion.
Also, most people simply don’t have empathy for defendants. They assume that the world is split into we versus them. “We” are the “good guys” who abide by the law and have a moral code. “Them” are the criminals who flout our society’s laws and have no moral code. As a defendant, you probably take a certain amount of umbrage to this stereotype – you have a strong moral code, despite the charges against you. Likely, you’ve justified your actions in some way. For instance, if you are a physician or a dentist who committed Medicare fraud, maybe you just got fed up with the crazy Medicaid reimbursement system – all the red tape and hassle. So you decided that “you were going to get yours” since the system had taken so much from you. Thus, you went down the not-so primrose path.
In any case, you do not believe that you are a “bad” person, but you do recognize that there are aspects of your behavior or your beliefs that you would like to change. Even the act of recognizing that you are at this stage in your life – of beginning to look in the mirror – is going to be helpful for you. Not to be compassionate – not only towards yourself but also towards your accusers.
All that being said, you face some practical challenges. To that end, you may wish to engage Harvard Law School educated former prosecutor Michael Kraut of the Kraut Criminal & DUI Lawyers (6255 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 1520, Los Angeles, California 90028) for a free and confidential consultation. In his past work as a Senior Deputy DA for Los Angeles, Mr. Kraut worked to put on white collar criminals behind bars and punish them; he now uses his knowledge and connections from his past prosecutorial life to help clients like you protect and preserve their rights and dignity.