I'll give you two hypothetical situations: 1) Vendor manager Jim tries to defraud a vendor. He gets caught, and confronted about it. He realizes he messed up,

I'll give you two hypothetical situations: 1) Vendor manager Jim tries to defraud a vendor. He gets caught, and confronted about it. He realizes he messed up, accepts responsibility, and resigns on the spot. 2) Vendor manager Joe gets pressured by boss to defraud a vendor because the boss is under pressure from his boss to cut costs or be fired. Joe pushes back, gets reprimanded for not following Amazon's "disagree and commit" principle, and gets a poor performance review. Joe learns his lesson, defrauds his vendors, and everything is fine. The boss's boss and boss leave eventually because they never could get costs down, and the newly re-orged boss notices some discrepancies. Joe gets blamed for defrauding customers, and is told that he is now violating Amazon's "Insist on the Highest Standards" leadership principle. Joe immediately quits out of frustration with Amazon's leadership and culture. Here is the problem: Both scenarios have the same paper trail of a fraud allegation and immediate resignation. And that paper trail is enough security to defend a position in court...especially if it is the employee's burden of proof to show what really happened.