The Examiner – Insights on Fighting Financial Fraud

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.

As we continue to share what we learned from our Special Investigative Unit (SIU) counterparts, we will dive deeper into the subject of resources, which I mentioned in last week’s post. Resources are an essential component to helping us meet goals.

When internal controls breakdown, an organization’s risk of fraud increases significantly. A few years ago, we helped a financial institution identify “an issue.”

In today’s world and in this line of work, I often wonder whether I am the only person who really cares about fighting for integrity and holding people accountable for their actions. So I was super excited to attend my first ACFE Global Fraud Conference last month and be surrounded for several days by over 3,000 fraud fighting professionals.

The ACFE’s Global Fraud Conference is the best place I’ve found to gain technical knowledge, which helps me develop ideas related to recognizing emerging future fraud risks. It also provides me with a boost of positive energy to fuel my passion to fight fraud. The following are key takeaways from this year’s conference:

With the exhibitors gone and the conference wrapping up, the final day is always bittersweet. This is my last blog from Nashville and includes highlights from day three of the ACFE’s 28^th Annual Global Fraud Conference: