The Examiner – Insights on Fighting Financial Fraud

Account reconciliation—I’ve been itching to blog about this topic for some time now. It has been at the top of my list because it is such an important business process. I’ll admit that account reconciliation is not the sexiest thing in the world, but I promise to write an entertaining, engaging, informative, and inspiring series that you’ll want to share with others.

Over the past two weeks, both of my daughters had summer colds. I don’t know why, but summer colds seem worse than winter colds. The symptoms seem worse, and they always last longer.

I frequently present to audiences about fraud and ways to prevent it—like implementing internal controls. I even developed an entire training about trust versus control, which covers this concept of trusting employees versus implementing controls.

People are playing Pokémon Go everywhere. Are you playing? I downloaded the Pokémon Go app last Tuesday—less than 24 hours after telling a co-worker that I would never download it. I saw more and more hype and just couldn’t stay away any longer. The app is fun to play, and it also rewards players for walking.

This past Friday an interesting thing happened to me, and I am excited to share it with you because it relates to my last two blogs. A manager in HORNE’s healthcare practice asked for a few minutes of my time to discuss an upcoming project. She was planning an internal audit involving a client’s payroll department and wanted to discuss some fraud risks that should be considered and tests that may help uncover potential fraud.

In last week’s blog, I promised to provide some ideas on how auditors and auditees can work together to find fraud. I will deliver on that promise, while suppressing the urge to compare a fraudster’s emotions to a Fourth of July fireworks show—we will save that one for another day.

The responsibility for finding fraud is a highly debated topic and one I enjoy discussing with different groups because most individuals have a lot of passion and emotions wrapped up in their perspectives and opinions. I can’t believe that I haven’t written about this topic before, and it’s funny that it took a swarm of bees to inspire me to do so. 

As always, the ACFE Global Fraud Conference delivered a week of learning and networking opportunities to more than 3,000 professionals from approximately 70 countries. From Oscar-winning actor, Richard Dreyfuss, to New York Times investigative journalist, David Barboza, the keynote speakers delivered riveting, informative, and inspirational presentations.

I have a technology dilemma that is going to catch up with me soon if I don’t do something about it. Our family has used PCs with Windows operating systems since we purchased our first home computer. When the iPhone came out, we decided to take a step toward the Apple world. Moving through the years from the iPhone 3 to the iPhone 6S and adding a couple of iPads and an Apple TV along the way, we are now stuck between worlds. This isn’t all bad because the technology works fine together. It just isn’t as seamless as it could be.

No matter how “good” a kid is, they will get into trouble. It is a fact of life. It is how we learn. When they are toddlers, they may use a marker to write on their baby sibling. As a 4 or 5 year old, they may cut their sibling’s hair or their own.