5 steps to an unhappier life (prison).

• Author: Mayne, Jerome
• Position: Avoiding Committing Fraud

Many of us have a perception of what fraud is. Fraud is Enron or Bernard Madoff, where hundreds of millions of dollars are skimmed, stolen or embezzled. But it doesn't end there. Fraud is not just major news and multimillion-dollar crimes. Fraud does not have to be profitable, or successful, to be a crime. I met unsuccessful, broke, white-collar convicts in the houscow.

How did I get there? I didn't start out with a scheme or a plan, but I got involved and was one in the minority of the inmates who admitted to it.

I was in real estate finance in 1994 when I was approached by a group of investors who were buying and selling homes. Over the next seven months, I prepared loans for their buyers and sensed that the documentation was not on the up-and-up. They submitted fake paystubs, W2s and other standard loan forms. But I never acted on my suspicions. I didn't ask, and they didn't tell.

A few months into this relationship, I started getting a couple hundred bucks here and there for "looking the other way." But I became too nervous to continue being the loan officer in these transactions, which I was sure involved too much shady stuff, and I stopped working for these folks.

I'm often asked why I kept working with these investors for all those months. Most people think it was greed--but it wasn't. I worked with them because it was a challenge. I didn't think of the losses my involvement would create. The head of the seam had befriended me and I didn't want to let him down.

Over the next four years after I left these "investors," I founded and grew a squeaky-clean real estate investment company and a mortgage company. I remembered and liked the model the investors were using--buy low, sell high--so I decided to try it myself.

I bought a house, put it on the market at a higher price, but could not find a qualified buyer over the course of a month. So I called the "investors" I was previously working with and got in on a transaction (that I knew was made out of straw) to sell my house. I made $10,000 on the sale.

After the transaction, though, my boss asked me if I was "in business" with these "investors." I told him what transpired with my house and asked if I was in trouble. He said, "The appearance of impropriety is as bad as impropriety itself." I got freaked out and quit my job for fear I would get fired.

At the end of 1998, however, the FBI arrested me outside of a restaurant and charged me with conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud and...