10 Things a Fraud Examiner Has Learned About QuickBooks®️

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10 Things a Fraud Examiner Has Learned About QuickBooks®️

Stephen Pedneault CFE, CPA/CFF of Forensic Accounting Services LLC said he has been using Quickbooks before it was even called Quickbooks (it used to be called Quicken for all you youngsters out there). While it is a handy, affordable tool for small business, nonprofits and churches, it is also vulnerable to manipulation. Here are Pedneault’s 10 lessons learned to help guide you through your next investigation involving Quickbooks.

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Using Emojis and Geo-Location in Your Financial Investigations

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Using Emojis and Geo-Location in Your Financial Investigations

Think emojis are used only for personal text messages from Gen-Yers? Think again. According to Wale Ayantoye, emojis within payment apps could help you spot drug deals, gambling transactions, prostitution and fraudulent business trips.

Ayantoye is a Global Sanctions Consultant at Square Inc. and shared his experience of using data from emojis combined with geo-location to catch illegal activities by savvy fraudsters. “It’s more of a cat and mouse — we are thinking how are we going to catch up with them and they are thinking how are they going to evade our programs,” said Ayantoye. “For any compliance or fraud program, you need access to all of the information you can get.”

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Financial Institutions: Collaborate and Converge or Suffer the Consequences

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Financial Institutions: Collaborate and Converge or Suffer the Consequences

Looking to strengthen your financial institution’s (FI) financial crimes initiatives and get ahead of potential schemes and scams? Follow the steps below, and you will be well on your way.

  1. Assess your risk as a group with leaders from different areas of Fraud, Cyber and AML.

  2. Decide on your recipe for countering those risks.

  3. Layer that with a top-level governance structure with all of the people on different teams dependent on each other.

Sounds easy enough, right? Not so fast. This checklist requires patience, fortitude, teamwork, leadership and the expertise of people from every department in your organization. Oh, and executive buy-in and support.

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How to Make the Most Out of Your First Virtual Conference

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How to Make the Most Out of Your First Virtual Conference

Let me start by saying, I know this might be weird. I know you might be leery. How are we supposed to pretend like the 31st Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference is a real conference if we can’t shake hands, exchange business cards or sit in a freezing conference room wishing we brought our winter coats? I was apprehensive at first, but trust me — this conference will be full of fascinating speakers, the latest topics and trends, and, of course, one-of-a-kind networking. And the best part? You will be there!

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Making Compliance Cool

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Making Compliance Cool

“Before you get to what you’re going to teach people, you’ve got to get their attention.” Vince Walden said, quoting Rashelle Tanner, the director of the Compliance Learning Program at Microsoft, to illustrate what he wanted to convey about compliance to virtual attendees of the ACFE Fraud Conference Europe on Monday. He added, “You have got to make compliance more engaging and figure out how to make training stick.”

Walden, the managing director of Forensic Technology Services at Alvarez & Marsal Disputes and Investigations LLC, encouraged listeners to use different techniques to make compliance training and adhering to best practices fun, engaging and even a little surprising.

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How to Use Your Own Body Language to Gain Trust and Credibility

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How to Use Your Own Body Language to Gain Trust and Credibility

Not even two minutes after body language expert and author Mark Bowden began his keynote presentation at the ACFE Fraud Conference Canada, he knew that the audience members had already formulated their individual opinions of him. “You have already decided whether you like me or not,” he said. “You have already judged me. You’ve got a little voice in your head who is talking about me right now.”

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The Future of Fraud Investigations in Canada

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The Future of Fraud Investigations in Canada

How do you get a room full of attorneys, accountants and auditors to definitively agree on something? As Henry Tso illustrated at the 2019 ACFE Fraud Conference Canada in Montreal, you ask them if they have ever been a victim of a fraud attempt. Tso, a former RCMP superintendent and officer in charge, asked more than 340 attendees to raise their hands if they had received a call from someone pretending to work for the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) attempting to gain personal information. “I received a call two days ago from the CRA,” he said. “How many people received that call?” A flurry of hands went up without hesitation.

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