Corrupt In Mystic Pizza

Mystic Pizza, once made famous by Julia Roberts in a 1988 movie, recently resurfaced for less than theatrical reasons when the owner, John Zelepos, was sentenced to jail for tax evasion. Over the course of four years he managed to divert more than half a million dollars from his business’ gross receipts and into his family’s pockets (Cohn). While some people will find very little wrong with what he did, it calls into question his ethics, specifically his business ethics. The definition of ethics says that ethics are the moral principles that govern a person’s or group’s behavior. In all aspects of business, ethics are crucial in how people conduct their businesses: whether they are corrupt or not, if they are honest in their accounting …show more content…
The idea of investing in a corrupt company turned people away and either forced the company to go bankrupt or change their policies in order to be ethical. In the article about the Mystic Pizza owner getting sentenced, Michael Cohn uses the term diverted on multiple occasions to describe the way in which the money was moved in a corrupt manner. His choice of using diverted versus transferred or moved is significant, because in the context, diverted has a slightly negative connotation to it. This goes to further show that the way he conducted his business was …show more content…
Mystic Pizza, while they knew where all their money was, had not accounted and dispersed it in the proper channels in order to avoid jail time and monetary penalties, thus they were being dishonest with the government. When Zelepos was convicted with tax evasion, not only was he sentenced to jail, but also given numerous monetary penalties that he had to and is continuing to pay. The penalties and repercussions of his actions force other business orientated people to take a moment and consider and re-evaluate their own business endeavors to ensure they are participating in an honest manner in accordance with the