Live coverage from the ACFE Global Fraud Conference, including anti-fraud articles, session highlights, video clips and photo gallery.
“When you have truth on your side, why should we still fear? The only ones who should be living in fear are those that have decided to commit wrongdoings and criminal activity, not those who have simply done their jobs or what is right,” said Wirecard whistleblower Pavandeep Gill during his speech accepting the ACFE’s Sentinel Award Monday morning at the 33rd Annual ACFE Global Conference.
Read MoreThe very public decline and fall of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) involved bitter partisan battles, allegations of voter fraud and a secret video recording. But it is also a story of heroes — namely a group of eight people — who at great personal sacrifice exposed embezzlement at the community-based advocacy group.
It is that clutch of brave souls — better known as the ACORN 8 — that wins this year’s Sentinel Award, which the ACFE bestows annually on a person or group of people who, without regard to personal or professional consequences, publicly discloses wrongdoing in business or government.
Read More"I was deeply wounded when I found out that ACORN was not living up to its mission,” said ACORN 8 whistleblower Marcel Reid in her Tuesday morning keynote address at the 32nd Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference. "And I was more deeply wounded when I found out that D.C. ACORN, along with national ACORN, had been misusing funds."
Read MoreIs this a good time to be a corporate whistleblower? Probably, according to a panel of watchdog experts, with some caveats.
The ACFE’s 2020 Report to the Nations shows that tips remain the most common way for fraud to be detected, which accounted for 43% of the survey respondents’ cases. However, panelist Stephen Kohn, a longtime counsel to whistleblowers, said employees should think twice before they report problems internally.
“My message to members is, don't fall on your sword,” said Kohn, chairman of the board of the National Whistleblower Center and partner, Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto LLP. “If you raise a concern, if you issue an audit report, if you make an internal complaint — and you get resistance from the company — don't set your hair on fire,” he said.
Read MoreHoward Wilkinson, the recipient of the 2020 ACFE Cliff Robertson Sentinel Award, admits that he’s a bit of an accidental whistleblower. And if his employer had been more responsible, he wouldn’t have been a whistleblower at all.
“Back in summer 2012, I had to help someone in the Estonian branch of Danske Bank where I was working [as a trader] get some financial information on a client,” Wilkinson said, during the lunch general session. “The client was a British limited liability partnership (LLP), so I went to Companies House, which is the U.K.’s official government agency that collects all the company information and annual financial statements,” he said. “I paid one pound, and I downloaded this company's financial statements.”
Read MoreFraud examiners might not always think of themselves as journalists, but there might be more overlap than you think. Both professions conduct interviews, they investigate documents, they write up their findings and, if they’re lucky, they can find unexpected breaks in cases or stories thanks to whistleblowers or unexpected sources. In her remarks to attendees at the 2018 ACFE Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific, veteran reporter Kate McClymont stressed the importance of those that come forward to blow the whistle.
Read MoreAfter receiving the ACFE’s Sentinel Award during Wednesday’s closing general session of the 29th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference, Kathe Swanson said, “I have finally received my closure,” as supportive attendees gave her a standing ovation.
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