The Examiner – Insights on Fighting Financial Fraud

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Is Valentine’s Day a celebration, holiday, or a day of observance? It probably doesn’t matter how you define it, because you either have someone to celebrate with or you don’t. If you have a Valentine, you probably feel obligated to buy a card, flowers, chocolate or all of them. If you don’t have one, then you are reminded that being alone sucks and you wish you could buy meaningless gifts for someone.

I started feeling sick last Thursday and the symptoms got worse over the weekend. The symptoms are slowly moving from my head to my chest. It seems to be a really bad cold and maybe something else. I am beating myself up because I probably pushed my body too hard during the marathon, which weakened my immune system. But being sick is throwing a wrench into my ultramarathon training plan.

My family and I started 2016 with a bang! We popped fireworks and spent time with friends. On the 1^st, we ate plenty of cabbage, black eyed peas, and pork for lots of good health, wealth and happiness. As some of you know, I am not a big fan of green veggies, and you are probably wondering how I was able to eat cabbage. Well . . . my mother passed along a recipe for cabbage casserole that is amazing. We cook it every year, and all who taste it agree that it is delicious. Even our kids enjoy it.

Fahrvergnügen was Volkswagen’s tagline from the nineties and just an all-around fun word to say. It has been a very long time since I have thought of the word, but the recent news articles and a request from a faithful blog reader brought it back into my life. Volkswagen is receiving a lot of negative press and the news media will continue their coverage because there are still many unanswered questions. I can’t address Volkswagen’s ethical environment, but with regard to this blog post, I can explain how easily ethical breakdowns happen within an organization.