The FBI Says it Busted an 18-Person Ring that Spanned 8 Countries and 28 States.  Make Up. Pump Up. Run Up. Daniel Gross at The Daily Beast explains:  It’s not the latest exercise fad. Rather, according to the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it’s the three-step process through which an 18-person ring allegedly committed a stunning $200 million credit-card fraud.   Here're the bas ...

External Attacks, Data Loss are Top Concerns Jeffrey Roman at Government Industry Security interviews Forensics expert Rob Lee  who says its not new types of attacks that concern him. It's the old ones that continue to impact organizations. How can organizations learn from past incidents and respond in 2013? The bulk of the cases he investigates are external breaches, not insider cases, says Lee, a seasoned ...

Here are four surprising ways to protect yourself in a law suit and keep legal fees to a minimum. Kevin Daum at Inc. advises:  "Shakespeare said, "First kill all the lawyers." Maybe this seems a tad aggressive, but then again, for most people the last thing you look forward to is someone showing up at your door with a subpoena. Whether a lawsuit is business related or personal, the thought of engaging an at ...

Whether you are engaged in a business valuation or a forensic investigation, do you know exactly what to do if you suspect that an employee of the subject company is committing theft? Darrell Dorrell and Gregory Gadawski provide company owners, CFOs, valuators, and forensic accountants with a check list of how to proceed in fraud investigations. The key procedural ingredient is caution. Here’s why. ...

Learn How the Pros Take Down an Embezzlement Scheme and Gather Tips on How to Best Defend Your Own Practice. Mark S. Warshavsky reviews Stephen Pedneault’s Anatomy of A Fraud Investigation. The book combines a step-by-step recounting of best practices with real-life drama as investigators discover, investigate, and resolve a fraud incident—a fantastic guide to how to defend against and uncover fraud. ...

Fraud's History is Impressive: From Over-the-Counter Cure-Alls to Florida Real Estate and Musical Talent Fraud The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners has built up a choice collection of fraud souvenirs under founder and chairman Dr. Joseph T. Wells. Visit the Accounting Today site to see  some of the most notable pieces, which include Bernie Madoff’s cigar box, an Enron stock certificate, a Nigerian F ...

How Much Do You Know about Protecting Personal and Corporate Information from Would-be Fraudsters? Find out what you know about how to analyze credit, what causes data breaches, what precautions to take when accessing hotspots in an airport with a laptop, current identity theft laws, and controlling physical access to restricted areas. ...

The Financial Professional's Guide to Healthcare Reform; Accountants' Handbook, 12th Edition New titles from Wiley this summer include Scott Miller on Buyouts, Dietrich and Anderson’s thorough Financial Professional’s Guide to Healthcare Reform, Roman Weil et al. on Litigation Services and the Financial Expert, and Graham and Carmichael’s Accountants' Handbook, 12th Edition.  ...

How to Arrive at an Appropriate Fair Market Price for a Medical Practice When valuing a medical practice, how do you determine fair market value in light of recent Stark II regulations? Some of it depends on the definition of the term “commercially reasonable.” And a lot also depends on accurate assessment of future revenues, as well as expense assumptions. Here’s a guide to what to keep an eye on as you na ...

An Unconventional Approach to Safeguarding Cash Billing schemes accounted for 23.9 percent of all payment-process fraud cases, and most of these cases go on for almost two years before they’re discovered. Here are two simple controls business owners can put in place to dramatically discourage fraud. The first is setting up a system for the owner to regularly review accounting statements each month at home.  ...

Tracy L. Coenan published a succinct guide to fraud analysis last year in the Wisconsin Law Journal that's very much worth reading.  Excerpt: ...

Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things NPR's Chana Joffe-Walt and Alix Spiegel have put together a fascinating podcast that examines the psychology of fraud. It often isn’t as easily explained as bad people doing bad things. Ethicists and psychologists have documented an unusually high number of people who start out, in their minds, doing the right thing. The story follows the case of Toby Grove ...

PwC Global Economic Crime Report: Cybercrime a Growing Threat  A new PwC report calls cybercrime one of the top four economic crimes – just after asset misappropriation, accounting fraud, and bribery/corruption, according to recent reporting in AccountingWeb.  What is cyber crime?  The PwC report, which you can read here, defines it this way: For our survey questionnaire, we defined cybercrime as: ‘an econo ...

Fraud and the Family Business: It’s Not So Unusual The dynamics of a family-owned business are like no other, writes Robert Rothbort at Accounting Today.   There's usually a great atmosphere of trust. But that can leave family businesses uniquely vulnerable to fraud.  Here are some common schemes: • “Ghost” employees. The family member overseeing payroll creates “ghost” employees that do not exist and arran ...

A Rogue Employee Might be On Your Payroll, Too So writes Sarah E. Needleman at the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, where she points out that small businesses tend to be more vulnerable to fraud than large firms: If a business as established and well off as UBS can suffer at the hands of one bad apple, could the same can be true for any business, even a small firm? According to various media reports, an allege ...

IT Guru Turns Out to Be Security Hole  Roger Kay reports at Forbes:  Small businesses have become a choice target for hackers, but by far the most common — and devastating — attacks on small businesses are inside jobs. This is the story of one such assault. The target (we’ll call him Peter) trusted his IT guy (Joe, for our purposes) because Joe worked magic.  Peter didn’t understand exactly what Joe was doi ...