• The Justice Department’s Slippery Slope: Enforcement Versus Regulation

    Guest post by Michael Volkov, Esq. The Department of Justice is proud of its record on FCPA enforcement. They take credit whenever and wherever they can. They trumpet every settlement. They proudly proclaim that over half of last year’s criminal […]

  • Red Flags Pointed Directly to Madoff

    It’s hard to believe that a Ponzi scheme as massive as the one perpetrated by Bernard Madoff got by anyone. Surely he was the most clever criminal alive, and was ingenious at hiding his fraud. There couldn’t have been any […]

  • Fraudulent Accounting Practices: Easy to Commit, Hard to Find

    We hear almost daily reports of companies engaging in accounting shenanigans to boost their apparent performance. As of late, companies like Diamond Foods (DMND), Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) and Avon Products Inc. (AVP) are grabbing headlines for their alleged […]

  • Discovery of Financial Documents in Family Law Cases

    Recently, my very smart friend and colleague Randy Kessler, Esq. participated in a podcast called Show Me the Money: Helping Clients Find and Protect Assets in a Divorce for the American Bar Association  Journal. The podcast focused on finding (and […]

  • Audit Malpractice Defense: Four Key Issues

    When a major fraud is discovered in a company, one of the key targets of litigation is usually the independent auditors. Two well-publicized cases in which management or shareholders suing the auditors after fraud was uncovered involve Koss Corp. (auditors […]

  • Auditor Malpractice: How to Sue an Audit Firm and Win

    Last week, Reuters printed an interesting and enlightening interview with Steven Thomas, the managing partner of Thomas, Alexander & Forrester … an attorney known for suing large auditing firms for malpractice… and winning! Recent big wins include $520 million and […]

  • Article at CFO.com: Investigating a Compliance Failure

    How to determine the right mix of expertise for a fraud investigation. By Tracy Coenen, Contributor to CFO.com It’s every CFO’s worst nightmare: despite your best efforts, your company’s compliance program has failed. There are credible reports of fraud and […]

  • Groupon: Problems With Customer Loyalty and Marketing Costs

    Prior to Groupon’s IPO last year, I wrote a few articles that were critical of the company. In one of my articles, I noted problems with loyalty of customers and merchants: It’s expensive to get new customers. Sure, a large […]

  • Investigating a Compliance Failure

    How to determine the right mix of expertise for a fraud investigation. Tracy L. Coenen – CFO Magazine It’s every CFO’s worst nightmare: despite your best efforts, your company’s compliance program has failed. There are credible reports of fraud and […]

  • Inline Marketing Scam: Same MLM Scam, Different MLM Name

    Through the years, multi-level marketing companies and MLM distributors have played a clever game of changing the wording to hide the truth. MLM activities have been referred to as direct sales, dual marketing, network marketing, multilevel marketing, consumer direct marketing, […]