The challenge of the chase

The ACFE Board of Regents ponder the exciting, frustrating and exquisite challenges of the fraud examination profession during the 28th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference.

You already know this: Fraud examinations can be both basic and complex. They’re basic because you can devise them by consulting a seminal body of knowledge such as the ACFE’s Fraud Examiners Manual. But they can also be excruciatingly complex because fraudsters can create such messy situations that you must depend on the wisdom of other fraud examiners to guide you through frustrating labyrinths.

On Sunday, June 18, at the beginning of the 28th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference, in Nashville, Tennessee, Fraud Magazine invited the members of the ACFE Board of Regents to provide advice to members. As Regent Chair Leah D. Lane, CFE, said at the end of the interview, the great motivation for many fraud examiners is “the challenge of the chase.”

The participants

• Leah D. Lane, CFE, chair: Lane is the director of global investigations for Texas Instruments, where she manages a group of investigators in the U.S. and Asia with global responsibility.
• Sidney P. Blum, CFE, CPA, CFF, vice chair: Blum, an intellectual property and fraud expert with more than 30 years of experience, has testified as an expert witness dozens of times, has written two books for lawyers on IP and had been an internal auditor for several Fortune 50 companies.
• Alexis C. Bell, M.S., CFE, PI, treasurer: Bell is the CEO and founder of Fraud Doctor LLC, which provides proprietary anti-fraud products and services. She’s the author of two books, “Data Analysis for Corporate Fraud Risk” and “Mortgage Fraud & the Illegal Property Flipping Scheme.”
• Vidya Rajarao, CFE, CA, assistant treasurer: Rajarao is a partner at Grant Thornton India. She’s a national leader for forensic and investigation services in India and the sub-continent and a member of the firm’s global forensic steering committee.
• Nancy E. Rich, CFE, MPA, secretary: Rich is a supervisory special agent with the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Norfolk, Virginia.