Redemption Breaking Rules

I'm grading Freshman Composition exit exams, two hour essays.

The community college where I teach has a high percentage of "non-traditional students."  One of them has written about being an account clerk for a company where she detected embezzlement by her supervisor.  She reported the theft to the "proper authorities."   A week later the supervisor took his own life.

And I was thinking, what if some auditor noticed strange irregularities in the books, and interrogated the account clerk, and it had transpired that the account clerk had told the supervisor, "I know you're stealing.  And this can ruin your life and mine, because I am now an accessory after the fact by not reporting you... but we can restore the money, and while I know this will be incredibly hard on you financially, it will buy back your soul"?

What then?  The law imprisons them both, and the money is not paid back, and the soul remains in the pawn-shop where it was left?

Now and then in grading essays, a shadow gets thrown over your day.  This is the one that will sit with me for the rest of the morning.