• The Psychology of White Collar Criminals

    Toby Groves is a fraudster turned researcher, having served time for mortgage fraud in income tax fraud committed while running Groves Funding Corporation. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison, and it was in prison that he began […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • When Employees Steal, the SEC May Punish the Company and the CEO

    Guest Post by Keith Paul Bishop Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on Keith Bishop’s blog, California Corporate & Securities Law on November 23, 2011. It offers us a different view from that of Tracy Coenen regarding the SEC’s […]

  • IFRS and Fraud: More Challenges, More Risks

    Written by Tracy Coenen, CPA, CFF AICPA Corporate Finance Insider Newsletter Reasonable accountants can disagree about whether a move to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) will improve financial reporting. One key concern is that principles-based financial statements are much more […]

  • Compliance Week: Koss Embezzlement and Small Company Internal Controls

    Today’s Compliance Week article, “SEC Pursues Small Company Over Lax Internal Controls,” [subscription required] discusses the SEC settlement with Koss Corp over the $34 million embezzlement by former Vice President of Finance Sujata (Sue) Sachdeva. The article explains the settlement, […]

  • SEC Pursues Small Company Over Lax Internal Controls

    Compliance Week By Tammy Whitehouse The Securities and Exchange Commission is sending another warning about fraud prevention by pursuing top executives at a small company for failing to stop a massive fraud, although legal experts are divided on whether it […]

  • Financial Statement Fraud: Olympus Makes It Look Easy

    What is a company to do when it wants to hide losses? Manipulation of the financial statements is the obvious first choice. It’s not hard. Sure companies have “internal controls,” which are supposed to include policies and procedures which ensure […]