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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Keynote Speaker Video: Dan McCrum

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Keynote Speaker Video: Dan McCrum

"Instead of suspending the people involved, they had been promoted. Nothing had happened,” said investigative journalist for the Financial Times Dan McCrum in his Monday afternoon keynote address at the 32nd Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference. "I knew this was a big break. For the first time we could really see inside the company. This is what you have to have to break these sorts of stories."

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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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Keynote Speaker Video: Thuli Madonsela

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Keynote Speaker Video: Thuli Madonsela

“You need a culture of encouraging people to do the right thing, and also encourage people to admit mistakes when they’ve made mistakes and give them an opportunity to rehabilitate themselves,” said former public protector of South Africa and professor for Stellenbosch University Thuli Madonsela in her Monday morning keynote address at the 32nd Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference. “As fraud examiners, I think our work should include helping people to fix the system.”

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South Africa’s Connector of Light, Thuli Madonsela, Opens Virtual Conference

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South Africa’s Connector of Light, Thuli Madonsela, Opens Virtual Conference

She was called “South Africa’s Corruption Crusader” by BBC News, was named as one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2014 and received a French knighthood. Professor Thulisile “Thuli” Madonsela can now add one more award to her long list of achievements. At the virtual ACFE Global Fraud Conference today, she accepted the ACFE’s highest honor, the Cressey Award, and spoke about the top three things she has learned over her career.

“I’m grateful for this award because it affirms that my team and I did our work to the best of its ability,” Madonsela said. “It takes a village to do the things in life that are attributed to one person. It took a village to do the work we did in combatting fraud, corruption and all kinds of improprieties in the governance of public affairs.”

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