Category: Compliance in current and historical events

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Compliance in current and historical events

Compliance and Stephen R. Covey’s “emotional bank accounts”

Stephen R. Covey’s famed self-development insights can also be applied to compliance and ethics. The acclaimed author of the worldwide best seller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has provided motivation to managers, students, and progressive people for many years. Covey’s work was far more than just a self-help guide or a management how-to. With his emphasis on character ethic as well as values and principles, Covey created an interesting body of work that can be broadly used in crafting the business mission statements he endorses so heartily, from a compliance and ethics and perspective.

This post takes an in-depth look at each one of Covey’s 7 Habits to explore the applicability of each one for the work and goals of compliance professionals. All seven of the habits encourage conduct that is positive and productive for compliance risk awareness. Inner success, sustainable and functional interdependence, and strategic, purpose-driven vision are just some examples of the compliance culture qualities that the 7 Habits consistently endorse. Trustworthiness, credibility, and honesty are the cornerstones of individual relationships and organizational identities in Covey’s system.

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Compliance in current and historical events

MiFID II conduct principles and markets integrity

MiFID II – the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive – became law across the European Union on January 3, 2018.  It’s intended to overhaul the entire supervisory framework for financial sector organizations who are in the EU, have clients in the EU, or wish to have access to or establish equivalency for the markets there.  Its predecessor law, MiFID I, became law in 2004 and was judged to have not stood the test of time in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.  Therefore the seven year drafting process – from 2010 to 2007 – that culminates in MiFID II implementation this year is aimed to set a higher regulatory standard for investment banks, broker-dealers, and other institutional market participants and their employees.

Much of the attention about MiFID II implementation has focused on the burden to organizations from financial costs, human capital and efforts, and changes in commercial strategy that will be required for firms to work toward compliance with the new laws.  The laws are thousands of pages long and touch nearly every area of the financial services markets.  Some of the major areas of focus in MiFID II are investment research, transaction reporting, and brokerage compensation arrangements.  However, the far reach of banking and securities markets activities into the economy means that laws intended to govern this sector have a broad and dramatic scope as well.

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Compliance in current and historical events

Travel safety and regulation

Travel safety is one of the most important objectives of the overall supervisory agenda.  Consumer protection and public safety intersect in this topic.  Keeping travellers away from harm and maintaining safe and orderly routes and equipment should be the top priority of any commercial entity providing transportation to consumers.  At the same time, companies working in the transportation sector look to legal and regulatory requirements to set minimum standards for safety infrastructure and motivate investments in technology and human capital improvements.  Regulatory action, or inaction, can therefore have a huge impact on protective measures and responses to threats to safety taken by companies such as airlines, rail transit operators, and private transportation providers.

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Compliance in current and historical events

Imposters throughout history

Imposters are a fascinating sub-set of fraudsters. Throughout history, individuals who have committed fraud for a variety of reasons – financial gain, social mobility, and even political or corporate espionage – by pretending to be someone they are not. Some of these people are repeat fraudsters, spending much of their lives assuming other identities and committing great amounts of time to working on complex backstories for their false identities, including disguises, accents, and fake community or cultural ties. In order to commit these fraudulent acts, imposters often make deft use of social networks and engineering, by falsely representing themselves in personal or business relationships and then using one misrepresented connection in order to forge subsequent ones.

In this respect, imposter fraud is often the proximate cause of many other types of fraud, creating the trust and credibility that provides access for the faker to commit his or her offenses. Therefore from an ethical culture perspective imposters are quite interesting to study, in order to ponder their motivations or the heuristics and expectations for honesty and evidence that allow their fraudulent efforts to succeed.

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Compliance in current and historical events

Interesting cases of retractions by scientific journals from Retraction Watch

Retraction Watch is a blog that started in 2010 with the objective of publicizing, studying, and contributing to the investigation of retractions in scientific journals of academic research and writing. The validity of academic papers is often held to a vaulted status because of the famed system of vetting through peer review and editorial boards before publication. Identifying mistakes in this context, then, whether through inadvertent technical errors, minor or major, or some intentional misrepresentation or fraudulent conduct, is an interesting and necessary practice in order to uphold academic integrity.

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Compliance in current and historical events

Regulatory and compliance omissions in the Volkswagen emissions scandal

The Volkswagen emissions scandal, also known as “Emissionsgate,” kicked off in 2015 when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) notified the carmaker that it was in violation of the Clean Air Act.  With the altered engine emissions controls, the programming misrepresented nitrogen dioxide output so that it appeared to meet US market standards.  In reality, however, the real performance of the vehicles on the road without the altered programming for the testing environment resulted in output that exceeded the regulatory limit by up to 40 times.  For a basic overview of the Volkswagen emissions scandal as it unfolded since 2015, check out this primer from the BBC:  Volkswagen: The scandal explained.

The altered emissions results were ultimately exposed due to re-testing.  The International Council on Clean Transportation accumulated research from a variety of sources which upon study showed additional emissions in road tests from those recorded in the regulatory testing environment.  Once these non-conforming results were provided to the California Air Resources Board in 2014, they were ultimately escalated to the EPA, resulting in the investigation and enforcement action which led to the Clean Air Act notice of violation.  The investigation conducted by the EPA demonstrated that from 2008 to 2015, Volkswagen had intentionally modified many diesel engines in its vehicles to fraudulently “pass” regulatory testing.

In the aftermath of the EPA notice, Volkswagen was subjected to investigations in various countries.  The fix for the emissions issues to bring them into true compliance with the regulatory standard may cost the company as much as $15 billion or more, with fines so far in the US alone of almost $3 billion and several executives facing personal criminal charges for their role in the fraud.

One of the striking aspects of this particular corporate scandal is that as the corporate misconduct was exposed, it showed that Volkswagen took advantage of the regulatory testing by exploiting design and engineering knowledge in making engine construction choices expressly in order to deceive it.  In many cases of consumer safety or standard violation recalls, the manufacturer merely fails to make required changes or delays doing so, resulting in unsafe conditions or violation of regulatory and legal requirements.  Similarly, defeat devices which “trick” regulatory testing systems (actually codes programmed into the vehicles’ computerized control panels) are nothing new in the automotive industry, as explained in this Ars Technica piece.

In the Volkswagen’s case, however, as explained in this Investor’s Business Daily article, the carmaker made redesign choices to its emissions system that were not practical for business purposes but directly enabled the testing manipulation.  Then, when faced with a need to demonstrate compliance in order to access the market, instead of altering planned performance or gas economy standards, the company opted to game the system with installing defeat devices on the very system it installed knowing it would need to be defeated and would enable doing so.

So why would a company make all of these conscious choices to dupe the system and spend money on deceptive systems instead of making the same amount of effort to establish real compliance and avoid the dishonesty?  At its root is most commonly what was referred to in lawsuits against Volkswagen by several states as a business culture of “corporate arrogance.”  As this NPR article explains in a nutshell, Volskwagen thought it could get away with the fraud because others in the industry did it too and because it was Volkswagen.  The company rigged its vehicles after going to great lengths to determine that it was definitely illegal to do so, against clear legal advice and in light of full knowledge of the consequences, and in a culture of non-compliance which rewarded cheating and did not take responsibility or model appropriate conduct.

Nowhere is this values deficiency in the Volkswagen corporate culture more evident than in the reaction by the CEO, Matthias Mueller, to the public outcry in response to the fraud.  This interview with NPR shows how problematic the tone and conduct at the top was in the public handling of the scandal.  Rather than modelling accountability and transparency, Mueller instead insisted that there were no ethical issues at Volkswagen and that rather the emissions fraud was due to a technical problem in the company’s interpretation of US law.  Mueller repeatedly asserted that the company did not lie or deceive but instead misunderstood US legal requirements, a disingenuous and unconvincing defense for a major global corporation which must contend with a complicated fabric of regulatory and legal frameworks all over the world to meet its duties in doing business.

The gap created by this purported legal misinterpretation could and should have been filled by a values-based approach, where taking corporate social responsibility for environmental impact and making business decisions based upon best collective outcome rather than ease and expediency, with some enablement of future cheating as a side benefit.  Demonstrating integrity is not as simple as apologizing once you get caught, and portraying violations as mistakes is not an example of ethical leadership or sustainable business values.

For more on EPA compliance, check back on Thursday, January 25, for a round-up on current rule-making and enforcement trends at the agency.

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Compliance in current and historical events

Fraud in sports: Doping scandals

This is the fifth and final post in a series of five posts on the topic of fraud in sports.  The first post, from December 5, was about cheating in marathons and how incidences of it are exposed, investigated, and disclosed to the public.  The second post, on December 12, was about fraud and falsification among thru-hikers within the long-distance hiking community.  The third post, from December 19, was about fraud in sports from gambling and betting.  Last week’s post focused on fraud in sports via game/match fixing. Today’s post will be about major doping scandals in different sports and will discuss the ways some very high-profile athletes cheated by doping, how their uses of performance enhancing drugs were supported or not identified by various institutions, and how individuals impacted for various reasons by doping have dealt with this in the aftermath.

Doping has been a controversial topic in the sports world for decades, as scandals over the use of performance-enhancing substances in various athletic programs have recurred unrelentingly.  Revelations of doping by athletes, both on their own and as part of national athletic programs that have sponsored and aided them in taking drugs to artificially aid their performance, have been in the news constantly.  Heroes from sports have been knocked off their public pedestals as the truth of their cheating and drug use has been revealed.  Olympians and world champions have lost their medals and records, while state athletic systems have put the chances of future athletes, now innocent of any wrongdoing, of competing on the world state at risk because of prior systematic unethical decision-making.  Athletes who competed “clean” have been robbed of their moments of glory and missed out on professional opportunities they would have had, if they had not been bested by other athletes competing unfairly while taking performance-enhancing drugs.  Sponsors have invested in athletes based upon unreliable, misrepresented statistics.  Above all, the integrity of the game for other participants as well as spectators has been impaired and thrown into great doubt and uncertainty.

The ways athletes dope are as varied as the sports and events in which the fraud takes place.  The one reliable fact about the fraudulent use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports is that ongoing administrative efforts to test for it and oversee institutional protections against it are seriously lacking.  Regulatory bodies, whether part of the athletic programs or connected to national programs or international organizations, are often inadequately supervised, incompetent for the task, or insufficiently resourced.  Until major change takes place in the control frameworks and supervisory structures which exist to protect the integrity of sports from cheating and dishonesty, doping scandals will continue to undermine the credibility of athletic programs and events.

  • The Russia doping scandal has been in the news unrelentingly for several years, stemming from accusations of state-sponsored doping during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.  Claims of systematic doping in Russia, supported by the state system there which for decades has been well-known as one of the most intense and involved national programs in the world, have dogged the state officials, the athletes both from past delegations and with future ambitions of competing, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC).  After investigations which have been dogged every step of the way with unreliable information from state-sponsored anti-doping testing centers and repeated discrediting of various athletes from past Olympics, the IOC decided to ban Russia from sending an official delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.  Russian athletes will still be eligible to attend as neutral delegates, but pride of representing their country or the opportunity to stand on a medal podium for it will not be possible.  This story will continue to unfold and promises to hold only further dishonor and disappointment on many sides:  Russia doping scandal
  • For sure the continuing drama with Russia’s state sport system will go on right away, as Russia is hosting the 2018 World Cup.  This creates an uncomfortable situation for FIFA.  In the aftermath of the IOC banning Russia from the 2018 Winter Olympics under the cloud of doping suspicions, public outcry has grown for FIFA to consider banning or punishing Russia in the 2018 World Cup as well.  This is a considerably more awkward proposition, as Russia is the host of the upcoming 2018 World Cup, and FIFA is no stranger to its own controversies from legal accusations of corruption and bribery by its officials in various countries.  It is difficult for FIFA to ignore that the current controversy around Russia stems from when Russia hosted the Olympics in 2014.  Russia hosting the World Cup in 2018, then, is fraught with concerns about integrity of game play if the host country fields a team.  Barring the Russian delegation from competing in an event their country is hosting is hard to imagine, but may be just the sort of consequence that could make necessary change begin to take root:  After IOC Bans Russia From Winter Olympics, FIFA Has To Decide About World Cup
  • Despite his once-storied history as a cyclist, cancer survivor, and inspiring public figure, Lance Armstrong is best-known now for something much less honorable.  His enduring legacy as of now is of having doped for years, evaded being caught by any testing efforts, denied it constantly and extremely publicly, and then faded from the public eye upon convincingly being exposed as a cheater and a liar.  While much has been written about the puzzling and complex psychology of someone who would pull off such a brazen and persistent fraud while holding himself out as the paragon of honesty and motivation for achievement, one of the more interesting questions has always been how he got away with it for so long.  It was definitely a team effort, and subsequent reports have shown that indeed Armstrong and those who supported him and benefited from his ongoing performance created a wide-spread doping program in which they studied and exploited weaknesses in the anti-doping system and brazenly avoided detection and testers:  Report Describes How Armstrong and His Team Eluded Doping Tests

Years after his precipitous fall from grace, Armstrong is seeking to rehabilitate himself in the public eye by doing a podcast and seeking a return to his position as the foremost expert in Tour de France inside knowingly and cycling expertise.  With his race victories erased by the disclosure of his doping that got him to them, Armstrong is seeking both a platform and an identity, and wants to connect both to the sport in which he was once an idol.  However, the dishonesty of his eminence in the Tour de France while he was cheating to sustain his achievements make it difficult to imagine redemption or even revisionist acceptance of his actions to bring visibility to the sport of cycling:  Lance Armstrong: ‘A man with no platform is a lost man’ 

  • Chris Fromme is a successor to Lance Armstrong in the world of professional cycling. For years, cycling has been tormented by disclosures of doping and the impact of drug abuse on the sport.  Athletes have been discredited and records vacated seemingly without end.  Fromme is one of the stars of a cycling squad, Team Sky, which is very vocal about their zero-tolerance policy for doping and their commitment to clean racing.  So, if his drug test results that indicate he’s doped are upheld, he could be subject to a yearlong ban and major reputational risk for both himself and his team.  Fromme is arguably the biggest superstar in cycling since Armstrong, so if he ends up discredited too, then professional cycling will have a major existential crisis on its hands.  An overhaul of cycling’s doping rules and enforcement practices to improve and simplify doping regulations could both improve credibility and ensure more transparency and clarity in the system in the future:   The Only Solution To The Chris Froome Problem Is The One Cycling Will Never Accept
  • Like cycling, track and field is another sport which has been oppressively troubled by allegations of doping and dishonesty.  Athletes in track and field were disproportionately impacted by the Russian doping scandal as it unfolded during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, Brazil and showed that the world records, qualification times, and even prior medal-winning races lacked integrity due to the participation of athletes who were on drugs.  Many track and field stars, including some whose own careers had been negatively impacted by dopers who won medals and impacted sponsorship and professional chances they should have had, thought this was the moment for reform in anti-doping supervision and regulation.  However, this change has not come, and the opinion of athletes in the sport is unanimously that current drug testing schemes and rules are inconsistent and insufficient, do not work or represent the interests of athletes, and are therefore not fair to anyone:  We Asked Veteran Track & Field Athletes How To Possibly Fix The Doping Problem

One possible solution which has been bandied about is a reset of the annual records in track and field events to reflect only those from after 2005, which is when new anti-doping standards in track and field were implemented.  This may be an attempt at radical fairness, but it may be too much about optics and not enough about substance, and therefore not the right move to truly address and promote credibility in the sport: Track And Field May Scrap Its Records Because Of Doping Scandals. Is That A Good Idea?  Newer testing technologies, re-testing of old results to catch and bring to justice prior cheaters, and cultural encouragement of whistleblowers could all be better to improve the odds of catching sports dopers or discouraging them from cheating at all:  Sports Doping Cheats Fear Whistle-Blowers and Retests

If you enjoyed this series, look back to the ethical leadership in sports coaching series from last year.  Check out the last post in that series, which includes links to all the previous in the set.  In March, a new series on sports and ethics will begin, this time focused on integrity in game play and discussing topics such as the ethics of tanking, referee bias, penalty embellishment, and much more.

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Compliance in current and historical events

Fraud in sports: Game fixing

This is the fourth in a series of five posts on the topic of fraud in sports.  The first post, from December 5, was about marathon cheaters and how the frauds they perpetrate are discovered, investigated, and reported.  The second post, on December 12, was about fraud and falsification in the thru-hiking community.  December 19’s post was about fraud in sports gambling and betting. Today’s post will focus on fraud in sports both in history and current-day worldwide via game fixing. The fifth and final post in the series, on January 9, will be about major doping scandals in different sports and will focus on the ways athletes cheated by doping and how their use of performance enhancing drugs were supported or not identified by various institutions.

Game fixing is when a match is played to a final result which is partially or totally pre-determined.  Players, on their own or in conspiracy with others, may do this in an ongoing conspiracy in order to make money for and from gamblers.  Coaches and team administrations may also orchestrate losses for various reasons, including to impact their odds for the next season, including in draft position as well as for a friendlier schedule or playoff access.  For purposes of this post, game fixing also includes institutional operations to spy and cheat by teams personnel and coaches, with or without the cooperation of referees and/or players.

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Compliance in current and historical events

Fraud in sports: Thru-hiking fakers

This is the second in a series of five posts on the topic of fraud in sports. The first post, from December 5, was about marathon cheaters and how they are publicly investigated and exposed. Today’s post will be about imposters and scammers in the world of thru-hiking, a hard-core and tight-knit community of athletes who long-distance hike with the objective of completing a major trail end-to-end at once. Next Tuesday’s post, on December 19, will discuss fraud in sports gambling schemes, including those committed by players and to induce people into fraudulent investment vehicles. On January 2, the next to last post will be about game fixing, describing conspiracies by players to throw games or systemic spying and cheating operations by teams and coaches. The final post in the series, on January 9, will discuss fraud in sports via doping scandals, such as in the Olympics and the Tour de France.

Thru-hiking is the endeavor of hiking a long-distance trail in full within one hiking season. In the United States, there are three main trails where these attempts are made: the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail. Thru-hiking these trails can take months, passing through all kinds of remote trail and difficult weather conditions, and requiring immense planning and preparation to do so safely and with proper equipment, provisions, and support. Adjacent to thru-hiking is section-hiking, in which hikers complete parts of the same trails methodically over a longer period of time. Because of the intense nature of this activity, and the survivalist needs of the participants who camp rough along the trail and crowd-source information about conditions and news from both the outside world and further down the trail, tightly bonded communities of hikers form.

In this insular community comes a lot of trust and reliance on people’s credibility and honesty. People share materials, hike sections relying on each other’s planning and information about conditions, help each other when they are out of money or food, and generally work together to stay safe and make progress in their individual and collective efforts in the thru-hiking process. In such an intimate social group, reliance on honesty creates unfortunate opportunities for people to commit fraud and carry out scams. Sometimes these acts of dishonesty take advantage of other hikers, whereas others falsify accomplishments or misrepresent setting records.

  • In summer 2017, the story of an inspiring thru-hiker began making the rounds on social media, even receiving publicity in the press and coverage on television news. Stacey Kozel was portrayed as a hero for completing both the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail as a paraplegic with lupus. Unable to use her legs unassisted, Kozel relied on specially-designed braces that allowed her to not only walk, but miraculously walk long distances. However, much like the case of marathon cheaters, the online community of thru-hikers and those who support and follow them soon became skeptical to her claims about her achievements. Thru-hikers operate on a quasi-honor system, without a self-regulatory organization to administer verification and investigation efforts when individuals proclaim that they have completed hikes or set records. However, a robust independent community exists on forums online and that community relies upon much of the same data used by marathon runner authenticators – GPS data, photographs, witnesses, and other real-time physical evidence. No one could remember seeing Kozel on most of the trail, and encounters she should have had with other hikers in rest and communal areas were totally lacking. The photographs of Kozel were mostly only taken at trailheads or other area relatlvely easy to access by driving and then walking a short distance. Kozel reiterated her claims that she did the thru-hikes, but did not stand up to continued scrutiny, and she subsequently removed most of the coverage of her purported hike from the internet. One of Kozel’s possible motivations for pretending to do the hike could have been to get publicity for her leg braces, as she stated that she wanted to be an inspirational user of them and to encourage insurance companies to cover them: How Did No One Notice This Inspirational Hiker On The Pacific Crest Trail?
  • Taking the endurance sport of thru-hiking to an all-new level, there are some individuals who take an ultra-marathon approach to completing the trial. These people aim not only to complete the trial in one go, already an audacious task, but to do so as quickly as possible, in pursuit of a record known as Fastest Known Time (FKT). In 2016, Kaiha Bertollini claimed to have set a huge FKT on the Appalachian Trail. Her announcement of her achievement was shortly followed by major doubts and dissension. Bertollini did not have a support crew, was seen drinking and smoking on the trail or even taking “zero days” where she did not hike at all despite her claim of a lightening-fast finish time, and did not produce the proof and documentation demanded by the community, claiming that her phone that held the evidence was broken. Claiming an achievement like a FKT without the requisite evidence in the 21st century, with the community’s obsessive demand for proof and data easily satisfied by all the recording capabilities technology affords, is sure to arouse criticism and mistrust: The Problem with Claiming a Fastest Known Time in the 21st Century
  • Further in the challenges of the concept of validating FKTs, the popular doubts about claims of setting records suggests that there may be some need for a more robust and reliable authentication system. As the sport grows in popularity and recognition, the unofficial arbiters of the records may need to become at least somewhat more official. In their early days, ultramarathons were plagued by the same questions about reliability of their results, as informality and athlete-driven timekeeping reigned. However, most ultramarathons now are governed by some administrative entity or a race organization, and they typically have reliable, consistent rules about the type of data that is accepted to substantiate accomplishments and prevent concerns about alteration or falsification. The time could be near for thru-hiking and FKT attempters to follow suit: We Need to Re-Evaluate the Fixation with Fastest Known Times
  • On a different note, one of the reasons why most people know anything all about thru-hiking or about the trails on which it happens is because there have been several very popular books and film adaptations about the attempts of amateurs to join the sport. Two of the most famous of these books (with movies based on both) are Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” and Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild.” These books, depicting thru-hiking attempts on the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail respectively, are both bestsellers and have fascinated readers with their depictions of the authors’ amusing and emotional attempts to immerse into the lifestyle of the thru-hiker. However, a careful contemplation by a real thru-hiker would lead anyone to likely conclude that neither of these authors truly thru-hiked or accurately depicted the experience of having done so. In all cases, the authors wrote interesting, engaging books, mostly appealing emotionally to the readers by retelling the tales of their lack of preparation and overwhelmed reactions to the hike. In the end, they often had to reduce their efforts and could not meet their ambitions. Their books are more about this than they are about actually thru-hiking, and therefore they may reproduce conversations or thoughtful revelations truthfully, but the descriptions of the trails themselves, which induce many other amateur hikers to embark on journeys of their own, are perhaps not so faithful: Why the Most Popular Hiking Memoirs Don’t Go the Distance
  • Finally, a tale of an imposter scammer who chose the trusting and supportive community of thru-hiking to execute his cons: Jeff Caldwell is a serial scammer who operated for many years in the outdoor community, posing as a thru-hiker and taking advantage of fellow thru-hikers and people to whom he appealed because of this identification. He used his false accomplishments as a thru-hiker to pull off romance scams. He claimed he had completed what is known in the thru-hiking world as the Triple Crown – thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, and the Appalachian Trail. These assumed bona fides gave him credibility in the community and made his victims easier to befriend and defraud: Inside the Mind of Thru-Hiking’s Most Devious Con Man

Check back next week, Tuesday December 19, for the third post in this series of five, which will be about fraud in sports as illustrated in sports gambling.

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Compliance in current and historical events

Fraud in sports: Marathon cheaters

This is the first of a five-part series discussing fraud in sports. This starts with today’s post which will discuss runners who have been publicly exposed as cheaters in marathons. Next Tuesday’s post will be about imposters and scammers in the world of thru-hiking, a popular endurance sport where people long-distance trail hike in areas like the Appalachian Trail in the Eastern United States or the Pacific Crest Trail which stretches from California to Washington. On Tuesday December 19, the third post will be about sports fraud via gambling, including betting by players and illicit investment schemes. The fourth post on January 2 will be about game fixing, such as the Black Sox Scandal in which several players on the Chicago White Sox conspired to throw the World Series. The fifth and final post, on January 9, will be about major doping scandals, including Lance Armstrong and allegations of systematic doping by the Russian Olympics delegation.

Marathon cheating is a phenomenon that has both fascinated and infuriated running commentators. In a community which is fixated on qualifying times, personal bests, and self-identifications as hobbyist or elite runners which can be separated by mere seconds of pace time, honesty about runner times and speeds is sacred.   In this context, runners who cut courses short, falsify results, or claim publicity for false achievements, undermine the most fundamental measures of success in the marathon running world.

  • In the 1980 Boston Marathon, Rosie Ruiz, a 26-year old New Yorker, finished first among the female runners with an impressive time of just over two hours and thirty minutes. In the face of her amazing accomplishment, Rosie was nonplussed and composed – probably because she cut the course and did not run the 26.2 miles. Ruiz had her medal revoked when other runners stated that they witnessed her running onto the course at mile 25. It turned out that she exited the marathon course near the beginning and took the subway there, where she re-entered and claimed a false victory. Upon investigation, it was discovered that Ruiz’s Boston qualification time, run in the 1979 New York Marathon (her only other marathon before), was fake also, achieved because Ruiz again cut most of the course by riding the subway to re-enter near the end. Ruiz’s fraud rocked the marathon running community, in which road racers had a strong honor code that they felt was pure and safe from cheating that had afflicted sports with equipment or environments that could be altered or adjusted for cheating: Backtalk; 20 Years Later, the Legend of Rosie Ruiz Endures
  • Kip Litton intended to be well-known far outside of his social circles in Clarkston, Michigan as a champion marathoner. However, he has gained notoriety for a different accomplishment in marathon running entirely: prolific misrepresentation of his results and of races run. As Litton shot to the head of the pack in a number of small marathons, his fellow runners became confused by and curious about his quick rise to the top. By investigating race photographs and triangulating his likely performance based upon verifiable race times and per mile paces from previous chip-timed runs, other runners discovered that Litton was falsifying his performance. He was able to pull off this fraud by strategically picking races where he could cut courses or claim to have run qualifying times without even participating at all. The evidence of Litton’s misconduct assembled by the amateur investigators is fascinating and pathological in its devotion to his fraud, even amid Litton’s disqualifications from various races after inconsistencies were pointed out to directors: Marathon Man 
  • Social media has provided a fertile environment for inventive marathon cheating. Legitimate runners who share photos showing their bibs, the identifying numbers that runners wear pinned to their chests or backs during the race, have had those photos stolen and used for bib replication. Runners then use the fake bibs to “bandit,” or run incognito and illicitly, at races. This could be to avoid paying registration fees, to falsify qualifying records, for a prank, or for a creative type of identity theft. As discussed above, the runner community is vigilantly self-policing, and the fascination with these bandits leads to far-reaching vigilante investigations and reporting to race administrators to “out” cheaters:  Inside the Weird World of Social Media Marathon Cheating 
  • The 2017 Mexico City Marathon was mired in scandal when almost 6,000 runners, nearly 20% of the field of 29,000 runner, were disqualified for cheating. Investigation showed that many runners missed timing mats. Others, however, blatantly cut the course, either by riding the subway (harkening back to Rosie Ruiz in New York in 1979 and Boston in 1980) or “bib mules,” runners who wear bibs intended for other runners who do not compete at all, in order to falsify their results (typically to post a qualifying time for Boston or another exclusive race). What exactly happened in Mexico City remains unclear, but it seems to have been a combination of opportunistic runners who took advantage of technological difficulties or shortcomings at the race, and runners cutting the course short by missing timing mats. Such a dramatic disqualification rate should lead the Mexico City organizers and indeed anyone who is behind setting up and administrating a major race event to take a deep look at their internal controls and ensure that future races are set up to diminish the possibilities for going off-course or bandit running:  What the Hell Happened at the Mexico City Marathon?
  • For runners who achieve their results legitimately, race day represents many months or even years of hard efforts brought to fruition. Therefore, for serious runners, cheating and falsifying results is a real insult to all of their work and cheapens the prestige they seek of a credible accomplishment. Therefore many marathon runners who are active in the online communities such as the LetsRun forums take their annoyance or offense at this perceived dishonesty to the next level, launching widespread investigations into uncovering and calling out impropriety. Many runners who do not cheat see those who have cut courses or faked times bragging online, promoting themselves via social media, and their outrage at these actions speaks to the philosophical morality of running. At its most elemental level, and despite the many data-driven external successes one can achieve in the sport, running is a pursuit of internal success, a battle within the self for endurance and accomplishment. Cheating hinders and harms this. People who investigate and call out cheaters hope that they are working as deterrents to runner dishonesty as well as acting as a sort of informal self-regulatory organization for the running community: How to Catch a Marathon Cheat  

For a lot more fascinating examples of and insight into marathon cheating, check out the site Marathon Investigation. Run by Derek Murphy, a business analyst, marathoner, and running fan, the site is a comprehensive survey of impropriety and cheating at marathons all over the world. It offers a really compelling look into the analytical and research aspects of investigating and tracking potential cheaters by using historical data, GPS records, published running times, maps, race photos, and much more publicly available data. For more about Murphy and his motivations and methods, read this profile.

Check back next week, Tuesday December 12, for the second post in this series of five, which will be about fraud in sports as illustrated by thru-hiking fakers and scammers.