Chapter 21 - Northstar Recovered
Northstar survived because scandal was not entire company.
We had forty-two employees.
Thirty-nine had nothing to do with Glen.
We changed controls.
Related-party vendors required written disclosure.
Invoice splitting detection.
Second approval for repeated sub-threshold payments.
Company phones auto-wiped after confirmed loss if technically possible.
Vendor bank-account changes independently verified.
My biggest professional lesson:
Controls should not depend on believing people you love will behave better than strangers.
That sentence became part of annual governance meeting.
Not public branding.
No TED Talk.
Northstar eventually recovered about $183,000 through criminal restitution, civil settlements, and asset recovery over years.
Some remained unrecovered.
Insurance covered a portion after deductible and exclusions.
We absorbed rest.
No miraculous full reimbursement.
Revenue dipped five percent during scandal.
Then recovered.
Five years later, Northstar employed sixty-one people.
I remained CEO.
May you like
Not because betrayal made me stronger.
Because I was already good at my job.
