2025 Hubbard Award: Carolyn Conn, Ph.D., CFE, CPA and Zachary Kelley

Named in honor of the late ACFE Regent Emeritus Dr. Thomas Hubbard, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE’s) Hubbard Award recognizes the best feature article in Fraud Magazine, as decided by the members of the ACFE Editorial Advisory Committee.

This prestigious award commemorates Hubbard's significant contributions to fraud examination and highlights the importance of excellence in journalism and education within the profession. Each year, numerous articles are nominated for this coveted award, and the selection process is rigorous, ensuring that only the most impactful and well-written pieces are considered.

This year’s recipients are Carolyn Conn, Ph.D., CFE, CPA, and Zachary M. Kelley for their article “The flawless fraud of real-time deepfakes” published in the July/August 2024 edition of Fraud Magazine. Kelley and Conn delve into the alarming rise of real-time deepfake technology in facilitating sophisticated fraud schemes. They highlight incidents where fraudsters used AI-generated video and audio to impersonate trusted individuals during live interactions, such as a case where a company employee was deceived into transferring $25 million during a video call with what appeared to be his CFO, who was, in fact, a deepfake simulation.

The article underscores the challenges these hyper-realistic deceptions pose to traditional fraud detection methods. Their insightful analysis emphasizes the urgent need for advanced countermeasures, including AI-driven detection tools, enhanced verification protocols and comprehensive public awareness campaigns.

Carolyn Conn, Ph.D., CFE, CPA is a clinical associate professor of accounting at Texas State University who teaches fraud examination, accounting ethics and CPE accounting ethics courses.  She has experience in multiple university administrative positions, including payroll and budgeting, controller and associate vice president of financial services. As associate VP, she was one of two project sponsors of implementing ERP software for accounting, budgeting, payroll and human resources.  Dr. Conn’s teaching and research interests include ethics and ethical decision-making, along with fraud prevention and detection. She was honored as the 2021 ACFE Educator of the Year. Zachary Kelley is a faculty member at Texas State University in the Information Systems and Analytics department where he teaches a variety of topics, including cyber warfare, information security, accounting information systems, business intelligence, programming, Agile, statistical analysis and enterprise resource planning. He has more than 10 years of professional experience in information technology leadership positions, more than 20 years of experience in logistics and SCM and many more years than he is willing to admit in information technology in general.