Delving Into the Psychology of Billionaire Fraudsters

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Delving Into the Psychology of Billionaire Fraudsters

Preet Bharara laughed when asked about how he feels about “Billions,” the TV show that is loosely based on his investigation of the hedge fund SAC Capital when he was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District Court of New York.

“It is fun for there to be a television show that is popular, even though it takes a lot of liberties, that is about the U.S. attorney as opposed to the district attorney … so that was nice,” he told ACFE vice president and general counsel John Warren, J.D., CFE, at the 32nd Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference.

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Lessons in Whistleblowing: How the ACORN 8 Triumphed in the Face of Adversity

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Lessons in Whistleblowing: How the ACORN 8 Triumphed in the Face of Adversity

The 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.

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Is Fraud Risk Assessment Any More Accurate Than Fortune Telling?

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Is Fraud Risk Assessment Any More Accurate Than Fortune Telling?

When you think of a fortune teller, you may picture an older woman with a scarf on her head hunched over a crystal ball or a man sporting impressive facial hair and lots of rings shuffling a deck of tarot cards. Regardless of how you picture this hypothetical fortune teller, you likely are already judging them through a skeptical lens. Fraud examiners tend to be skeptical by nature, and people who read palms, purport to talk to dead family members or promise any sort of glimpse into the future seem to promise the impossible. However, the way that fortune tellers use cold readings in their practices can have many similarities to how anti-fraud professionals approach fraud risk assessments.

In his session, “Fraud Precognition: Crystal Balls, Tarot Cards, and Other Risk Management Tools,” at the 32nd Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference, Jack Healey, CFE, CPA/CFF, compared some fortune telling techniques to common pitfalls in fraud risk assessment. Healey, the CEO of Bear Hill Advisory Group, told attendees that when approaching fraud risks, they need to ask themselves, “Am I any better than a fortune teller?”

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Seen on the Screen: Reshaping and Relearning

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Seen on the Screen: Reshaping and Relearning

“Technology has continued to advance and enable remote collaboration better than ever while we are all still physically apart — a silver lining to the pandemic! I have appreciated technology and video conferencing enabling more frequent and timely collaboration with fellow anti-fraud professionals, such as through the remote roundtable discussions provided by the ACFE for Corporate Alliance members and through Discord at the Global Fraud Conference.” — James Rumph, CFE, Sr. Director, Enterprise Anti-Fraud Team at Nationwide Insurance and Chairperson of the ACFE Chapter Leaders Committee

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Emotional Intelligence: The ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ That Sets You Apart

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Emotional Intelligence: The ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ That Sets You Apart

According to Nicole Babnick, HR director at Avalon Health Care and former attorney and investigator, one of the best ways to check your biases at the door is simply to acknowledge that you have them. This act of self-awareness emphasizes just one of the four areas that make up emotional intelligence (EI). And, according to Babnick, EI can make or break an investigative interview.

In her session, “Emotional Intelligence: The ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ That Sets You Apart,” Babnick discussed how self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management can each play a part in conducting a successful investigation. And, believe it or not, none of them have anything to do with your business acumen, where you went to school or what characteristics you were born with. While many of us attended the first day of the ACFE Global Fraud Conference to learn how to improve our auditing, compliance, risk management and other skills, those make up only half of what we need to be sharpening.

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German Regulators Investigate the Investigator During Wirecard Debacle

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German Regulators Investigate the Investigator During Wirecard Debacle

Like many fraud examiners, reporters often hate being part of their stories. They’d much rather remain in the background, asking the questions and discovering the facts. Dan McCrum, an investigative reporter for the Financial Times, described that less-than-ideal scenario in his keynote address during the Monday afternoon session of the virtual 32nd Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference. McCrum is the recipient of the ACFE Guardian Award.

“I have pictures here of a couple of criminal suspects,” McCrum said as he showed photos on the screen of himself and Markus Braun, the former CEO of the infamous German company, Wirecard AG. Wirecard collapsed in June of 2020 when Braun announced that 1.9 billion euros of its funds were “missing.”

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Staying on Top of Health Care Fraud in Times of Crisis

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Staying on Top of Health Care Fraud in Times of Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic threw the entire world into chaos, and as fraud examiners know, chaos creates opportunities for fraudsters. While individuals, companies and governments scrambled to stay safe, bad actors jumped at the opportunity to make a quick buck off the confusion and fear that permeated the global environment. This was especially true in an industry that became the central focus for many people — health care.

“The good news is you will always have job security,” Rebecca Busch, CFE, told attendees at the 32nd Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference. Busch, who is the CEO of Medical Business Associates, Inc., dove into some of the fraud schemes health care professionals saw during the pandemic in her session, “Health Care Fraud in the Time of COVID-19: Current Trends and New Risks.”

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