Specializing in financial investigations as we do, I am always fascinated when new financial frauds come to light, and I always want to know how the person got caught.
In the case of the recent Yale School of Medicine fraud in which an administrator took more than $40 million in fake computer purchases (desbribed in
What lesson does the Brexit vote hold for anyone conducting or contemplating fact investigation?
Don’t let confirmation bias muddy your thinking.
One of the key “Investigator’s Enemies” identified in my book, The Art of Fact Investigation, confirmation bias is what many of us tend to do when looking into an issue: we find what
We write (and tell our clients) consistently about how difficult it is to obtain the bank account information of litigation opponents without first getting a court order. There are people out there who will charge you to trick banks into divulging this information, but they break the law when they do this.
If you are
UK lawmakers recently unveiled a new plan to fight domestic and international corruption within its borders. From the perspective of investigators tasked with uncovering hidden assets, the most striking piece of this legislation is the plan’s proposed establishment of a central register of beneficial owners of companies. The plan would also make it a crime
Juliet Bickford, a Virginia news anchor, pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud and money laundering charges on Wednesday in connection with an international fraud scheme orchestrated by her private investigator boyfriend, Theodoros Grontis.
Court Documents allege that Grontis, who ran an investigation company called “Internal Affairs” with a former Toronto police detective and his wife
Yesterday, a judge in Spain named Princess Cristina, King Juan Carlos’s youngest daughter, as a suspect in an ongoing money laundering and tax fraud case involving the Princess’s husband, Inaki Urdangarin. The judge alleges that the Princess and her husband participated in a scheme to embezzle approximately $8 million in public funds, which
It’s always nice to be able to know who has loaned people money. It helps in asset searches, of course, but we also like to call bankers in after-fraud investigations. Now getting to the identity of those lenders is about to get harder.
Secured creditors have to put their customers on the public record. Such
Anita Collins, an elderly woman working as an accounts payable clerk for the New York Archdiocese, was recently arrested for embezzling funds from the church. That’s bad news for the archdiocese. But the real black eye for the church is that the entire experience could have easily been prevented. Had the church run a simple
What’s the difference between a forensic audit and a regular audit? We think we know the difference when we see it, but what is it? The issue came up before a short talk I was giving to some accountants last week, and the answer was relevant to our fact-finding business.
A regular audit is not
One thing we always tell new clients: there is no such thing as a “local” investigation. A Russian guy in L.A. means you could be dealing with a Nevada corporation in addition to Russia and California. An apartment in Miami may be owned by a British Virgin Islands company.
That’s a good thing to remember