Recently, the former comptroller of a Maryland dance academy pleaded guilty to fraud after she gambled away nearly $1.5 million of school funds at a local casino. One embezzlement fraud conviction is bad enough. But the woman in question had ...
Blog
For nearly 25 years now, I’ve been exhorting CPAs to take seriously their responsibility to detect fraud during an audit—or face the potentially ruinous financial and reputational consequences of accountant malpractice claims.
Sadly, many ...
A forensic examination can yield a mountain of data from a variety of disparate sources that can help expose wrongdoing and provide hard evidence critical to proving (or disproving) a case.
But gathering and analyzing the data is just ...
Another Year, Another Multi-Billion-Dollar Haul for the Government in False Claims Act Qui Tam Cases
The U.S. Department of Justice recently announced that it had collected $2.2 billion in settlements and judgments from civil cases involving fraud and false claims against the government during the last fiscal year — with the bulk of the money ...
When reviewing a business valuation report, an attorney should check to see that the business appraiser considered the three approaches to value—market, income, and asset. While each approach has its own methodologies, our focus in this ...
Written in collaboration with Janine Driver, author of You Can’t Lie to Me
A few weeks ago, Bernie Madoff, architect of one of the largest and most infamous Ponzi schemes in history, died in prison. He was serving a 150-year term for ...
Discovering that a trusted employee has engaged in embezzlement fraud can lead to a series of sometimes contradictory responses by an organization’s leaders—actions that can harm an investigation and expose the enterprise to additional ...
When a couple is divorcing in an equitable distribution or community property jurisdiction and their assets include ownership in a closely held company, the value of the business typically must be determined.
Analyzing the company’s cashflow ...
Economic damages are designed to give claimants a chance to recover their financial positions in the wake of injuries caused by another party. Calculating those damages, however, is no easy task. Experts are required to help counsel and ...
Time off isn’t just a necessity to help employees recover and regroup, it’s also an opportunity for an organization to measure its efficiency and to uncover vulnerabilities it may face from fraud, waste, and abuse.
Here are just a few of the ...
Fraudsters often believe they have covered their tracks so well that their activity is untraceable, but they are increasingly running into a significant obstacle when attempting to hide their crimes: Their digital footprint.
During the last ...
During my over two decades of working in the valuation profession, I have valued several hundred entities and reviewed hundreds of valuation reports, including business valuation calculation reports, summary reports, and comprehensive valuation ...