January 2016 – Fraud Files Forensic Accounting Blog

Wisconsin Law Journal The Federal government wields a big stick when it comes to business-related crimes. Violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), fraud in the delivery of health care services or in the receipt of federal money for those services, and other whitecollar crimes can open up companies and their executives to harsh penalties under the United States Sentencing Guidelines.

Companies and executives can get reduced sentences if certain mitigating factors have been identified. One of those mitigating factors is having an effective compliance and ethics function within the company that attempts to prevent fraud and proactively identify criminal activities.

An additional way that companies have sought to mitigate their sentences is through confessing their violations of law to federal prosecutors.

The financial part of a case can become overwhelming very quickly. Particularly in cases involving white collar crime, securities fraud, Ponzi schemes, or other fraud recoveries, the trail of financial documentation is often very long. A forensic accountant needs to examine the financial documents and piece together the evidence in a way that attorneys, judges, and juries can understand.

When there are mountains of data, the investigator needs a way to quickly examine the data, assemble it in a format that is usable, find connections between transactions, and quantify results. Traditional forensic accounting techniques are no longer effective in these types of investigations. The volume of data can quickly overwhelm the investigator, and this affects the quality of the results.

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