The Examiner – Insights on Fighting Financial Fraud

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.

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.