Time to shake things up

Ten years into my paralegal career, 5,000 miles away from my hometown, and with a spouse on deployment somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, I decided things were too quiet. It was time to shake things up.

I’d been working in the legal department of a small bank in Hawaii in a fantastic job. But it didn’t seem to be pushing the right buttons for me anymore. One day, I was presented with a bankruptcy petition that didn’t look quite right. I saw that it had all the markers of bankruptcy fraud. I alerted the attorney to whom I reported and wrote an internal report for the fraud department to review. I outlined my suspicions, attached the petition and the appropriate account numbers to the report and moved along with my bankruptcy file. I had no idea where this would eventually lead me and how different things were going to be a few months later.

Talking with an anti-fraud pro

The following morning, a fraud investigator at the bank found me at my desk to ask me some questions about the bankruptcy. After a great conversation, she asked me if I had done this before. Done what? I had never written a fraud report, but I had plenty of experience with briefs and case notes. Did I really do a good job on it?