The rash of corporate scandals have established beyond a shadow of a doubt that white collar fraud can be incredibly damaging, in many cases wiping away life savings and costing innocent Americans billions of dollars of their hard earned money. Innocent consumers, investors and employees depend on their personal investments to help purchase a home, to finance their children's education and to fund their retirement.

What's needed most are laws that impose tough criminal and civil penalties on corporate wrongdoers. These laws will help protect employees and shareholders from future acts of corporate fraud and abuse. Likewise, we also need to make it abundantly clear that when these laws are broken, corporate wrongdoers will be caught and punished.

An example of a law that will accomplish these objectives is the "Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability Act of 2002", legislation Mr. Conyers introduced on April 9, 2002 and was later incorporated in Title 8 of the recently enacted Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Among other things, the bill creates a new 10-year felony for defrauding shareholders of publicly-traded companies; clarifies current criminal laws relating to the destruction or fabrication of evidence; extends the statute of limitations governing securities fraud claims; limits the ability of corporate wrongdoers to discharge debts incurred in violation of securities fraud laws; and provides whistleblower protections to employees of publicly-traded companies.

Enron's collapse and the wave of recent accounting scandals have become a symbol of a corporate culture where greed has been inflated and accountability devalued. And even though we can not legislate against greed, we can prevent greed from succeeding.