• Investigating Ponzi Schemes

    You’ve heard news stories involving Ponzi schemes. Investment scams and Ponzi schemes are all too common, even thought consumers are warned about them regularly. Investors are lured in with promises of high returns. People in or nearing retirement find these […]

  • Sources of Information for Fraud Investigations

    Without information, a fraud investigation goes nowhere. There are abundant sources of information on people and companies, and the availability of personal information on the internet continues to grow. Doing a thorough fraud investigation often goes beyond just analyzing documents […]

  • Damages in Securities Fraud Cases

    Tracy talks about the types of damages that an expert may be asked to calculate in securities fraud cases, such as realized/unrealized gains on investments, margin interest, and more.

  • Fraud by Top Executives

    It’s easy to assume that upper-level executives in companies with fraud scandals were always bad people. By assuming that they were inherently bad people, we don’t have to confront the issues related to trusting people who seemed trustworthy. We don’t […]

  • Financial Statement Fraud Red Flags

    Tracy Coenen teaches a group about some of the most common red flags of financial statement fraud. More information on corporate fraud is available in Tracy’s book, Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

  • 4 Legal Elements of Fraud

    Tracy talks about the definition of fraud, and the four legal elements that are generally required. Laws vary from state to state, so you can see some variation here, but this is the “textbook” definition. The elements of fraud include: […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • Clues to a Company Being Ripped Off

    How would you know if your company was being ripped off by a dishonest employee? Most companies miss all of the warning signs that could help stop a fraud early. Studies suggest that the average fraud scheme within a company […]