Compliance and legal departments are understandably guarded when dealing with law enforcement, who are often eager to build a case against a corporation and its executives.  That’s especially true today, as the Justice Department continues to signal its desire to prioritize these investigations. So when a company finds itself a victim of a crime, its legal team may feel uneasy picking up the phone and calling a local U.S. Attorney’s Office. There is often good reason to be careful.

Much has been written about cyberattacks and the pressure the government has applied to companies to report those. But more often, corporations and their employees are victims of more conventional crimes, like embezzlement, money laundering, misuse of computers, unlawful recording, or, most common of all, fraud. The company may have been tricked into making an investment that turns out to be part of a Ponzi scheme. Or it’s been duped into making a fraudulent financial transaction. Individual victims are defrauded every day, and companies are not all that different. The financial stakes and the collateral consequences for entities could, however, vary substantially.