The Made-Up Tickets

This story makes the Wells Fargo fake-account-creating employees look angelic. Two Hialeah, Florida police officers have been charged with alleged professional misconduct for issuing dozens of bogus tickets to drivers they never pulled over and ticketed. Cuts way back on the time required to meet your quota of tickets if you can just make stuff up.

Perhaps the most-jaw-dropping part of the story is how the fake tickets were discovered. Florida has no shortage of lawyers. One type of lawyer is the traffic ticket specialist. These specialists do their marketing. “No pagues ese ticket!” and “Don’t Pay That Ticket!” The lawyers send out cards and mailers to drivers (and they find them on public records) who have been issued tickets. These lawyers are also on TV and billboards. Their marketing efforts brought clients clambering to their doors. However, many of those clients swore that they had never been pulled over but they did remember passing two motorcycle police officers.

The clever lawyers took what they were finding to the city police department. Enter internal affairs. Following their investigation, the department concluded that the two officers simply wrote down license numbers and made-up names with the tickets going to the address for the vehicle license. One made-up name was “Martcello Strovanov.” Sounds like a chicken dish. One driver had six tickets issued on the same day by these same officers.

If the Barometer had to guess, she would say that the officers were trying to meet goals or quotas for tickets issued. Be careful what you measure. Be careful about goals and incentives. Employees will reach their numbers, but, just like the Wells Fargo accounts, what they are using to meet the goals and get their incentives might not be real.

About mmjdiary

Professor Marianne Jennings is an emeritus professor of legal and ethical studies from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, retiring in 2011 after 35 years of teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in ethics and the legal environment of business. During her tenure at ASU, she served as director of the Joan and David Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics from 1995-1999. In 2006, she was appointed faculty director for the W.P. Carey Executive MBA Program. She has done consulting work for businesses and professional groups including AICPA, Boeing, Dial Corporation, Edward Jones, Mattel, Motorola, CFA Institute, Southern California Edison, the Institute of Internal Auditors, AIMR, DuPont, AES, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Motorola, Hy-Vee Foods, IBM, Bell Helicopter, Amgen, Raytheon, and VIAD. The sixth edition of her textbook, Case Studies in Business Ethics, was published in February 2011. The ninth edition of her textbook, Business: lts Legal, Ethical and Global Environment was published in January 2011. The 23rd edition of her book, Business Law: Principles and Cases, will be published in January 2013. The tenth edition of her book, Real Estate Law, will also be published in January 2013. Her book, A Business Tale: A Story of Ethics, Choices, Success, and a Very Large Rabbit, a fable about business ethics, was chosen by Library Journal in 2004 as its business book of the year. A Business Tale was also a finalist for two other literary awards for 2004. In 2000 her book on corporate governance was published by the New York Times MBA Pocket Series. Her book on long-term success, Building a Business Through Good Times and Bad: Lessons from Fifteen Companies, Each With a Century of Dividends, was published in October 2002 and has been used by Booz, Allen, Hamilton for its work on business longevity. Her latest book, The Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse was published by St. Martin’s Press in July 2006 and has been a finalist for two book awards. Her weekly columns are syndicated around the country, and her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Reader's Digest. A collection of her essays, Nobody Fixes Real Carrot Sticks Anymore, first published in 1994 is still being published. She has been a commentator on business issues on All Things Considered for National Public Radio. She has served on four boards of directors, including Arizona Public Service (1987-2000), Zealous Capital Corporation, and the Center for Children with Chronic Illness and Disability at the University of Minnesota. She was appointed to the board of advisors for the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators in 2004 and served on the board of trustees for Think Arizona, a public policy think tank. She has appeared on CNBC, CBS This Morning, the Today Show, and CBS Evening News. In 2010 she was named one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Business Ethics by Trust Across America. Her books have been translated into four different languages. She received the British Emerald award for authoring one of their top 50 articles in management publications, chosen from over 15,000 articles. Personal: Married since 1976 to Terry H. Jennings, Maricopa County Attorney’s Office Deputy County Attorney; five children: Sarah, Sam, and John, and the late Claire and Hannah Jennings.
This entry was posted in News and Events. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.