Seo Yoon Yang, COL & WH ’26, Chattanooga, TN
Throughout my three years at Penn, taking courses in addressing the macroeconomics of contrasting economies and learning about the political instability of the Global South, I’ve been accustomed to the narrative of high levels of corruption and fraud among developing countries. However, this summer, as an investigative intern for the New York State Offices of the Inspector General in New York City, I had the opportunity to evaluate the rate at which corruption and fraud permeate and go unnoticed in our own country. Arguably, due to the diverse loopholes available for fraud and stark lack of oversight, varying levels of money laundering, manipulation, and government deception occur at much higher rates in America than the more publicized fraud of smaller countries.
As a prospective law student studying business ethics and international studies, I was particularly interested in the jurisdiction of the New York State Offices of the Inspector General as it focuses on financial and white collar crime. The Inspector General overlooks matters of corruption and fraud among a vast jurisdiction, including all government executive agencies, state-funded government projects, gaming commissions, correctional facilities, and government employees. From welfare fraud and workers compensation to power abuse, I was exposed to numerous cases involving varying degrees of financial crime complexity and had the opportunity to track and support investigations throughout the life cycle of a complaint. Supporting investigators as they served subpoenas and summarizing the interviews of key experts for the case reports, I observed the operations of the public service legal field firsthand, including the balanced inner workings of lawyer, investigators, and auditors.
In particular, I was able to use my background knowledge in financial documents and accounting in this internship. Interested in the litigation of corporations and their violations of human rights, at times, I’ve found some of the core classes at Wharton to be too detailed or business-oriented for reasonable applicability in the legal sphere. However, with the Inspector General, my background in business actually expanded the types of cases and analyses I was assigned, working alongside the auditing interns to review suspicious activity within bank accounts, such as high rates of Zelle credits coming in and out of individual accounts. In fact, my very first case assignment involved analyzing peer-to-peer activity transactions and supporting documents to compile a working hypothesis and list of individuals to subpoena their bank records as there was over $50,000 flowing in and out of one person’s crediting account over the course of six weeks.
Sitting in frustration at the famously-slow process of government bureaucracy; visiting correctional facilities in Washington Heights and observing a murder trial in the Manhattan district courts; asking questions to witnesses myself: this internship reinforced my dream to become a lawyer and confirmed how interesting the complexities of financial crime can be within the public sector.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2024 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here
