The Examiner – Insights on Fighting Financial Fraud

When I think of a small company, I think of the “mom and pop” business. This type of company usually starts as an idea and grows enough to sustain the income of the owner(s) and their family members. They grow from a few hardworking individuals, usually just the owners, to eventually hiring employees to help run the company. They treat their employees like family, and in some cases, they are family. These companies and their employees are a huge part of the United States economy.

As with people, every company is different. Some are small and some are large. Some are growing, while others may be shrinking. Companies have an identity or culture, which is formed by its owners, executives, managers, and employees. These characteristics can be important when evaluating red flags of fraud.

In this series, we will cover five categories of red flags related to the individual and the behaviors of people who commit fraud. Behavioral red flags are the most basic type of red flags we will cover.

I have struggled to pluck a story from my past that would help me introduce this series about red flags – the warning signs of fraud. I sought to find a story of warning where I failed to heed the warning and learned a valuable life lesson that warnings are important. I asked my older daughter for ideas, and she reminded me of a time when I took her and her sister hiking. I didn’t see how the story tied into my request, but after she explained, I understood.

With this week’s post, I hope to lighten the mood a bit, but I don’t want you to think that I take fraud lightly. If you know me, I like to tell jokes to make people laugh. However, I am sometimes ineffective because I come up with funny things in my head, but when I say them out loud, they come out as corny. 

I hope you enjoyed last week’s blog about the Boston Marathon. If you remember, I ended the post with a question, “Is it okay for someone to break the rules, mislead or cheat to run the Boston Marathon?”

As you can imagine, I was extremely intrigued when I saw the headline, “Dozens Suspected of Cheating to Enter Boston Marathon.” My fraud and running worlds collided in this article, which shines light on how some runners cheat to run one of the world’s most famous races, the Boston Marathon.

It is funny how your brain works. I can remember events from my childhood in vivid detail, but I forget what I learn at most training sessions as soon as I hear it. The ability to recall a memory is somehow linked to the strength of the emotions felt at the time the memory is created. Now, consider the emotional impact fraud has on those affected, and thus the memories that are created. In the majority of cases, these will not be positive memories, but because of the stress caused by the fraud, the emotions felt are sure to be strong.

This past week my family and I traveled to New York City. It was an amazing journey with one adventure after another. We walked around Times Square, rode bikes through Central Park, took a bus tour uptown, and caught a water taxi from midtown to downtown. It is hard to name all the sights we saw and adventures we  took, but here are a few:  Apollo Theater, Grant’s Tomb, 9/11 Memorial, Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, 5^th Avenue, Met, Guggenheim, Lion King, Charging Bull, Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, and Trinity Church.

I finished my first ultramarathon. It was an amazing adventure. The journey began by setting a goal at the end of last year and ended when I crossed the finish line on Saturday. I really enjoyed the race. It was wet, muddy, and slippery, but I find it very hard to complain when I only ran 31 miles. There were others running 50 or 100 miles. They were just getting warmed up when I was finishing. I say “warmed up,” but it was about 55 degrees when I finished (some 10 degrees cooler than when we started).