Posts Tagged ‘fraud’
A Difficult Picture for Anti-Fraud Today
The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners is holding its 2021 conference this week (virtually), and to that end the ACFE also just published its latest survey on anti-fraud budgets, resources, and challenges. Suffice to say, anti-fraud and internal audit teams have had a busy year. More than half of all survey respondents said they’ve found…
Read MoreDigging Into the State Street Settlement
I haven’t had time to write about this until now, but last week State Street Corp. agreed to pay a $115 million criminal penalty and accept a compliance monitor for two years, to settle charges that the bank deliberately overcharged its clients for years. If you want an example of how invasive compliance monitorships can…
Read MoreSome Stats on Fraud Training
Looking for some benchmarking data for how you should structure your anti-fraud training program and what it should contain? Fear not, a new survey from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners has you covered. The ACFE published its survey over the weekend, after polling more than 1,700 anti-fraud professionals around the world earlier this year.…
Read MoreFeds Warn on Vaccine Fraud
The U.S. Treasury Department is warning financial firms to be on the lookout for frauds and cyber attacks related to covid vaccines, and asking for some tweaks to what firms include in Suspicious Activity Reports that you might file in connection with vaccine scams. FinCEN, the enforcement wing of the Treasury Department, published the guidance…
Read MoreCovid and Fraud Risk: Still Rising
We have another update on fraud risk during the era of Covid-19. The risk is still going up, and compliance and audit executives running anti-fraud programs still have a harder time stopping it. So says the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, which published its latest fraud risk survey today. More than 2,000 anti-fraud professionals participated,…
Read MoreCovid-19 Fraud Risks Already Soaring
Well this is just great: a new report finds that fraud is rising across Corporate America, as cyber thieves and scam artists try to take advantage of the confusion spawned by companies responding to the Covid-19 crisis. The report, published by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners on Tuesday, surveyed more than 1,800 anti-fraud professionals…
Read MoreFraud Study Shows Benefits of Control Measures
Compliance and audit executives looking to justify all the steps you take to fight fraud, break out your reading glasses! The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners just released a sweeping analysis of corporate fraud that suggests those measures really do pay off. The ACFE’s 2020 Report to the Nations studied more than 2,500 cases of…
Read MoreDiageo Lessons on Internal Control
Talk about going on a bender: the SEC just fined spirits maker Diageo $5 million for forcing its distributors to buy more liquor than they needed, and then neglecting to tell investors that Diageo’s inflated sales numbers would eventually dry out. In the world of funny numbers, what Diageo did is known as channel stuffing,…
Read MoreInternal Control Airball at Sacramento Kings
Talk about a flagrant foul: The former chief revenue officer for the Sacramento Kings was sentenced Monday to seven years in federal prison, for duping some of California’s largest businesses into wiring $13.4 million to bank accounts he secretly controlled so he could buy beachfront homes on the California coast. Jeffrey David worked as the…
Read MoreOh, Gee: Fraud Case Involving Estimates
We have a fresh case of accounting fraud to mull this week, this time with a Wisconsin trucking firm where three senior executives cooked the books for years and eventually drove $245 million of shareholder value over the cliff. Yet again, poor internal control over management estimates and use of spreadsheets played a starring role…
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