FCPA Compliance Report: Judicial Discretion, Sentencing Advocacy, and a Proactive Compliance Model: Joseph De Gregorio - Part 2

FCPA Compliance Report: Judicial Discretion, Sentencing Advocacy, and a Proactive Compliance Model: Joseph De Gregorio – Part 2

April 13, 2026

In this episode, Tom Fox welcomes former Wall Street trader Joseph De Gregorio, who was federally convicted and now applies a “compliance rebuild” methodology to demonstrate genuine remediation under legal scrutiny. This is Part 2 of a two-part podcast series.

In Part 2, we cover how federal judges exercise broad discretion despite sentencing guidelines and often form views before the court based on the pre-sentence report and sentencing memorandum, with probation officers’ impressions shaped by a detailed defendant letter and authentic allocution; judges emphasize post-offense conduct and may discount lawyer advocacy. Joseph then summarizes patterns from 400+ white-collar cases, arguing that structural failures precede cultural and operational failures, and introducing the “access to scrutiny ratio” as the most predictive risk indicator. He lists five warning signals: unscrutinized top performers, known but unmapped monitoring gaps, unmanaged performance pressure, quietly resolved senior incidents, and compensation rewarding results without method (noting DOJ’s September 2024 ECCP update). He outlines a proactive Compliance Rebuild approach using human failure audits, reverse access audits, directional speak-up analysis, and DOJ-aligned prosecution simulations.