Serial charlatan Kevin Trudeau is up to his old tricks. Despite being caught by regulators violating consumer protection laws many times… despite being fined and sanctioned multiple times…. despite repeated violations of injunctions and orders….. Kevin Trudeau continuously invents new ways to avoid the long arm of the law.

Kevin Trudeau just filed for bankruptcy protection. And wouldn’t you know it, his lawyers say that the bankruptcy filing means the government can’t enforce an order that he pay a $37 million fine and that sanctions for non-payment cannot occur.

From a previous article about the Kevin Trudeau shenanigans:

Former KPMG audit Partner Scott I. London brought great shame to the accounting profession this week by being charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud through insider trading. After nearly 30 years with KPMG, London went down in flames after being caught passing insider information on audit clients of the Los Angeles office to his “friend,” Bryan Shaw.

Proving once again that there is no honor among thieves, Shaw got caught first, and then sold out his friend Scott to the Feds.  He helped them get a gorgeous trail of evidence, including phone calls and photographs of the crime.  Both are now charged with insider trading.

In 2008, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was charged in state court with 8 felonies related to perjury, misconduct in office, and obstruction of justice. In On September 2008,he pleaded guilty to two felonies for obstruction of justice and was sentenced to four months in the Wayne County Jail and ordered to pay $1 million of restitution to the city of Detroit.

The fun didn’t stop there. Kilpatrick has been accused of hiding money that could be used to pay $855,000 restitution owed to the city of Detroit, stemming from the conviction. Despite claiming poverty and an inability to pay the restitution he owes, money has been magically appearing! Money was transferred to his wife, and Kwame  himself received $4,000 from a mystery source. None of these funds were disclosed to the state by Kilpatrick, despite being required to do so under the conditions of his probation. It is suspected that Kilpatrick has money hidden, and that is the source of the funds.

Today Brian Willingham of the Diligentia Group has inspired me with his article Do Former Law Enforcement Officers Make Better Private Investigators? While Brian agrees that experience in law enforcement can be helpful to a private investigator, it does not necessarily make that investigator better. The same can be said for forensic accountants and fraud investigators: Law enforcement experience can be helpful, but it is not as important as you might believe.

Brian points us to a video that suggests that:

One year after MF Global “misplaced” $1.6 billion in customer funds, those funds still haven’t been recovered for investors. The money has allegedly been found, but that still doesn’t help customers who would like to get their misappropriated funds back.

Francine McKenna, a contributor at Forbes, notes there is another party that still hasn’t been held accountable in the MF Global debacle: auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers. She says:

The global audit firm would rather come off as stupid than complicit in the actions of whomever broke the law and stole MF Global customer funds.

Toby Groves is a fraudster turned researcher, having served time for mortgage fraud in income tax fraud committed while running Groves Funding Corporation. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison, and it was in prison that he began researching the psychology behind white collar criminals.

Earlier this year, Toby posted a five part article about his research and his findings.  You can read the series here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V. Most interesting to me was that overwhelmingly, the men doing time in prison for financial crimes considered themselves ethical people, and they didn’t even consider the possibility of going to prison. (In 2008, I wrote that I didn’t think that extended prison sentences for white collar crimes would have a significant deterrent effect. Maybe I was right?)

Mr. Groves is currently working on a documentary called “Viral Ethics,” which is scheduled to be released in 2013. I’m looking forward to continued research and blog postings from him.

On this season of American Greed, CNBC profiles Shawn Merriman.

ByJenna Martino
CNBC Associate Producer

Shawn Merriman was head of an investment firm and lay bishop in the Mormon church who persuaded friends, family, and church members to invest with him. It turned out to be a big scam, taking in more than $21 million. Among victims: his own mother.

The Ponzi scheme, which continued for 15 years, landed Merriman behind bars, and his investors out of money.

Complex financial investigations involve large sets of data, numerous accounts, multiple players, and lightning fast movements of money. Being able to accurately document these movements of money is the key to the financial portion of a case, whether it involves embezzlement, bribery, misconduct in office, money laundering, diversion of assets, or Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations.

Forensic accountants can quickly become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data that needs to be analyzed. Even with all of the modern technological tools available, many of the tasks in financial investigations are still done manually. Why? The format of accounting statements and reports varies so much that there is no single solution that can help capture that data. Instead, fraud investigators turn to manual data entry much of the time.

Short seller John Hempton published an interesting post yesterday about explaining what he does to his son:

I went through the mechanics of short-selling. I borrow a share from a broker. I sell it in the market. If the stock goes down I get to buy it back for less than I sold it. I repay the loan by returning the share and I keep the profit. I explained it does not work so well when the stock goes up.

Then I got to the nub of the issue: I am a short-seller of frauds and stock promotes. I look for people in the stock market who have fake accounts and who are stealing from gullible shareholders (also known as marks, dupes, fools, day traders or mutual fund managers).

A competent expert witness is vital to cases involving economic damages and other financial calculations. However, the expert must be much more than just a mathematician, market analyst, economic guru or forensic accountant. The job of the expert is far from over once the facts are analyzed and the calculations are completed.

Traditional accounting and finance skills are not enough when it comes to litigation. A financial expert witness must qualify as an expert in court and must convey the findings to non-accountants on paper and on the witness stand.