Theranos Whistleblower Is Building a Better Way Forward

/
Theranos Whistleblower Is Building a Better Way Forward

During the 2021 ACFE Women’s Summit, in the first keynote of the day, the ACFE’s Director of Research, Andi McNeal, CFE, CPA, introduced two women who have been championing the work of whistleblowers, sharing their stories and working to erase the stigma behind whistleblowing.

Erika Cheung and Cynthia Cooper engaged the virtual audience in an enthralling conversation about the ethical underpinnings that drive people to speak up when they see wrongdoing within a company. Cheung was one of the first whistleblowers who reported the medical malpractice at Theranos, which ultimately led to the shutdown of their medical lab. Cooper played a pivotal role in uncovering fraud at WorldCom and is now an influential speaker, consultant and author.

Read More

Insider Tips for Creating Memorable Ethics and Compliance Training

/
Insider Tips for Creating Memorable Ethics and Compliance Training

In a recent virtual session at the ACFE Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific, Rupert Evill sought to dispel the stigma and disdain surrounding ethics and compliance departments by teasing out the reasons for this stigma and providing attendees with insider tips to make compliance and ethics trainings memorable and effective. As the founder of EthicsInsight, Evill described his work by saying, “EthicsInsight is trying to simplify the way risk is assessed and benchmarked from a controls perspective so then you can really focus on managing the cultural change aspect.”

Read More

Treat the Illness, Not the Symptom: Fixing Fraud at the Root With an Ethical Corporate Culture

/
Treat the Illness, Not the Symptom: Fixing Fraud at the Root With an Ethical Corporate Culture

Examples of organizations employing fraudulent practices due to ethical lapses are in the media almost every week. Sometimes they let the bottom line become more important than adhering to their stated ethical values. Other times, they never cared about having an ethical framework in the first place. Regardless of why ethics were ignored, the outcome is almost always the same: fraud.

“I see fraud as a symptom of an unethical culture,” said Dr. Attracta Lagan, co-principal of Managing Values, in her keynote session at the virtual 2020 ACFE Global Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific. Dr. Lagan stressed to attendees how important it is for anti-fraud professionals to look at behavioral science when it comes to instilling and maintaining an ethical culture in their organization.

Read More

Betrayed Bank Assistant Vice President Embezzles $22 Million as Payback

/
Betrayed Bank Assistant Vice President Embezzles $22 Million as Payback

A misplaced paycheck stub started it all. Gary Foster, a former assistant vice president in Citigroup’s internal treasury finance department, said the stub — left next to an office printer — showed that a subordinate made $10,000 more than him.

“I was shocked,” Foster said during an interview with John Gill, J.D., CFE, ACFE vice president – education, at the Wednesday closing General Session. “I was in love with the company. I felt completely devastated. I’m working like crazy. … I felt betrayed.”

During the next two years, Foster’s resentment against Citibank festered. Finally, he realized that he needed some payback for what he deserved.

Read More

Making Compliance Cool

/
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.

Read More

Do You Know Where Your Corporate Ethics Come From?

/
Do You Know Where Your Corporate Ethics Come From?

Most fraud examiners understand that setting an ethical tone at the top is a vital part of an anti-fraud strategy. According to the 2018 Report to the Nations, having an established code of conduct reduced the amount lost per fraud instance by as much as 56%. However, it’s one thing to understand how important tone at the top is and an entirely different thing for organizations to actually establish and stick with an ethical framework and attitude that carries through all their business decisions.

Waheed Alkahtani, CFE, the executive director of the Saudi Anti-Fraud Association, discussed the importance of ethical decision-making during his session, “What is the Value of Corporate Ethics?” at the 2020 ACFE Fraud Conference Middle East in Dubai this February. “We have to sell the concept of conducting business with the highest ethical standards,” Alkahtani said. “With companies, countries and individuals, once they decide to be ethical and have principles, things will change.”

Read More

Cultivate a Culture of Asking Why

/
Cultivate a Culture of Asking Why

Preet Bharara has a more impressive résumé than most people can even fathom. Before writing his New York Times best-seller “Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law,” and hosting the podcast Stay Tuned with Preet, he served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for a little less than eight years. He made a name for himself there prosecuting white-collar crime. After prosecuting numerous cases of insider trading, corruption and money laundering, Bharara has expansive insight into what factors allow fraud to start, and to flourish, in organizations.

Bharara told attendees at the 2019 ACFE Fraud Risk Management Summit that culture is one of the most important facets he saw in preventing fraud.

Read More