• Allowing Management to Override Internal Controls

    It’s clear that there is a time and place for management to occasionally override a control. Everything in business is not routine, and there are times when special situations require special treatment. It would be silly to prohibit management from […]

  • Being an Expert Witness in Criminal Defense Cases

    Defendants in criminal cases such as tax fraud, money laundering, or embezzlement often need forensic accountants to help evaluate complex financial situations. Should you provide expert witness services to criminal defendants? Tracy discusses the work and some of the issues […]

  • Commit Fraud and Get Away With It

    A little tongue-in-cheek take on committing fraud at work. No, I don’t really want you to commit fraud against your employer. I’m just trying to illustrate some of the red flags of fraud. If a fraud is worth committing, it’s […]

  • Red Flags of Divorce Fraud

    The vast majority of family law cases are settled without trials. However, a client should not enter into a voluntary settlement if there are significant concerns about the truth of the financial disclosures and indications that assets or income may […]

  • Why Real Product Sales Don’t Occur In MLMs

    Multi-level marketing companies (MLMs) like to refer to themselves as “Direct Sales” companies, because this puts the focus on the sale of the product or service, and takes focus off the business of recruiting. I’ve been researching MLMs for more […]

  • Correlation Between Gambling and Fraud?

    Employee fraud always has a “cause.” The “cause” is the motive, desire, or need that is being filled by the theft from one’s employer. A need doesn’t have to be a true need in order for fraud to occur, but […]

  • Forensic Accounting for Construction Claims

    Tracy Coenen talks about the prevalence of fraud allegations related to construction projects and the work a forensic accountant can do in construction claims. She goes through the basics of the financial analysis performed on the numbers and documents related […]

  • Eliminating Opportunities For Fraud

    Perpetrators of fraud have plenty of schemes to choose from when cooking up their crimes. The fraud schemes range from petty theft by lower-level employees, all the way up to management cooking up stellar financial statements to dupe investors and […]

  • Fraud in a Family Business

    Trust is inherent in any good business. We continuously place trust in our employees and in those with whom we do business. But that trust which is so necessary to the operation of a business is also the impetus for […]

  • Investigating Cases With Large Volumes of Financial Data

    Many of the cases I work currently focus on the tracing of funds through multiple bank, brokerage, and credit card accounts. I am typically working with tens of thousands of transactions at a time, so the sheer volume of the […]