The Examiner – Insights on Fighting Financial Fraud

Recently, I received my letter confirming the annual renewal of my professional license. As I started to file it away, I reflected on how it felt when I was first licensed and could finally use the three little letters, “CPA.”

The stockings are hanging from the mantle, the lights are twinkling in the tree, and the presents are waiting to be opened.

It is that time again — Christmas. However, I have been looking past it. I am anxious about the new year and the transformation taking place.  We will be offering clients new services that will help them be more anticipatory, help them mitigate risks and maintain integrity. 

Moving along the anti-fraud maturity (AFM) curve will improve your organization’s culture and increase profitability. This shift in culture helps you fight internal and external fraud, protect against cybercrime, and remain compliant with regulatory demands.

I was invited to present this week at AICPA Controllers Conference, where I also presented two years ago. My first presentation was a four-hour workshop about real-life fraud and the second presentation covered the Anti-Fraud Maturity Curve (AFM Curve). The participants learned about the significant impact fraud has on the organizations and people involved—from the loss of human life to millions of dollars stolen.

Poltergeist, Friday the 13^th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Pet Cemetery are movies from my childhood. Each movie is scary in its own special way, and they all generate suspense and fear that transcends the theater experience. We imagine things lurking in the shadows or hear strange noises in the night. Fear is powerful—it can make you run faster than you thought possible or freeze you dead in your tracks.

The United States government has filed civil lawsuits against numerous entities and individuals to recover various assets “involved in and traceable to an international conspiracy to launder money misappropriated from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (“1MDB”), a strategic investment and development company wholly-owned by the government of Malaysia.”[i] According to one suit that was filed in June 2017:

Fall is a special time of year. The cooler weather is refreshing, the leaves are turning amazing colors, and candy corn is available almost everywhere. I enjoy seeing plump pumpkins, straw-filled scarecrows, and colorful Indian corn. I also look forward to wearing my coat or warming up next to a nice hot fire, which unfortunately doesn’t happen too often here in south Louisiana.

Some people are born leaders while others grow into leadership roles. There is a lot of gray area between and among these two leadership categories. I will use two proven leaders to explain both—Steve Jobs and Abraham Lincoln.

We all need structure in our lives. Parents provide it for their children, organizations provide it for their employees, and insurance companies provide it for their Special Investigative Unit (SIU) teams. The structure of SIU teams varies by company, but they all have the same objective—to mitigate fraud.

A Special Investigation Unit (SIU) is a select group of highly skilled, specially trained fraud fighters who choose to see things differently—skeptics who ask a lot of questions and have a desire to do the right thing. This desire is fed by specialized fraud training which helps them become experienced fraud fighters.