Defenders of multi-level marketing (MLM) will tell you that some companies “do it” right, while some companies “do it” wrong. The fact that a multi-level marketing company like Mary Kay Cosmetics has been around for more than 55 years does not define whether it is a fraud or scam. Remember …
In the early stages of divorce, clients are required to complete financial affidavits, financial declarations, or other similarly titled disclosures. The importance of an accurate disclosure of assets, liabilities, and income is obvious. Yet many clients are unable to accurately prepare this financial information. Particularly in high net worth divorces, …
With the end of the year approaching, it’s a good time to talk about some tax mistakes that can be very painful. With a tax code as huge and as complex as ours in the United States, there are countless mistakes we can make in preparing and filing our taxes. …
A few of the videos I will post here are what I like to call “Accounting 101.” They have some basic accounting information for those who need a bit of a primer on how the accounting process works. This video focuses on the parts of an income statement. I talk …
Cost-saving measures are always attractive to businesses. If a company with annual revenue of $10 million could eliminate a $500,000 expense, would management be interested? Internal fraud prevention could be the key to saving money in precisely this way. Experts estimate that companies lose about 5% of their revenue each …
There are a number of common signs that we may see when someone is engaged in financial fraud within a company. Tracy talks about the behavioral red flags for fraud in this video, which are also summarized below:
An important lifestyle consideration is the source of funding. Many families fund their lifestyle with one source of income, earned from their work. Other families have multiple sources of income that may include investments, trusts, debt, liquidation of assets or other sources. The funding sources matter when examining the lifestyle …
In order to properly plan a fraud investigation, a fraud examiner needs to be able to ask good questions that extract valuable information about what needs to be done. The specific questions vary with each investigation, but the following are some basic areas that an investigator should strongly consider exploring. …
How do you begin searching for fraud in a company? Sometimes I get called in when a company finds an employee stealing. They have found one instance of theft and they want to have the rest of the company looked at, but they don’t know where to begin. What should …
Have you ever wanted or needed to do a background check on an owner or executive of a company? If you’re considering investing in a public or private company, you may want to find out information on the people who started the company, those who currently own it, and those …