Audit

Barry Tong, CFE

Barry Tong, CFE, wanted to be an accountant ever since he was in secondary school, but it wasn’t until he joined a Big Four firm’s insolvency and restructuring department that he became interested in fighting fraud. Now, Tong spearheads fraud investigations as Grant Thornton China’s national leader of Forensic and Investigation Services (FIS) based in Hong Kong.

Four strategies for increasing organizational agility

Rapid changes in technology have meant that work environments now demand faster decisions at all levels, creating the type of conditions where fraudsters thrive. Here we look at how organizations and fraud examiners can best face these challenges in an increasingly agile age.

PPP’s complicated rules blurred lines between fraud and honest mistakes

Many U.S. businesses willingly defrauded the government’s Paycheck Protection Program loan program. But PPP’s byzantine procedures, applicants’ mistakes and some banks’ disinterest might have inadvertently caused well-meaning applicants to receive money they shouldn’t have. Now investigators must sift the wheat from the chaff.

Profile of an improper (corrupt) payment

What are the telltale signs of an improper payment? Here we explore the leading research into what can be measured and observed to find common patterns and profiles around improper, and sometimes corrupt, payments.

ACFE continues to grow and thrive

The ACFE, the world’s largest anti-fraud community, continues to thrive in an increasingly challenging environment, growing its membership, expanding its presence across the globe and becoming more diverse and inclusive. That’s the message from the most recent ACFE Report to Members.

The enemy within: Betrayal of leaders

Fraud committed by leaders and top executives remains all too common and causes an inordinate amount of damage to organizations around the globe. Here the authors examine one case they investigated and provide tips on how fraud examiners can best approach wrongdoing by those at the upper echelon of the organizational chart.

From many, comes one (algorithm)

Recent anticorruption research shows that when companies collaborate to share information about third-party payments and high-risk transactions, they have a 25% greater chance of predicting improper payments than when each company’s model is performed in isolation. A new data-sharing consortium led by a nonprofit at MIT is working to make such collaboration possible.

Lender beware

When inflation skyrockets, central banks increase interest rates to slow spending. Here, the author details why periods of high inflation might lead to high rates of fraud in the lending industry and what lenders can do about it.

Blind faith

ACFE President and CEO Bruce Dorris, J.D., CFE, CPA, reflects on the lack of oversight and controls that led to the fall of FTX and the importance for CFEs to prevent and detect fraud in the growing cryptocurrency market.

Iryna Shkraba, CFE

Iryna Shkraba, CFE, has conducted anti-fraud investigations in almost a dozen European countries. She’s a governance, risk and compliance professional who’s worked for organizations such as EY as well as financial industry companies. And while Shkraba is currently based in Vienna, Austria, she takes every chance she can to visit her family and friends in her hometown of Kyiv, Ukraine.

Two members join ACFE Board of Regents for 2023-2024

CFEs elected two new members to ACFE’s Board of Regents for the 2023-2024 term. The new members, Thomas A. Caulfield, CFE, and Natalie S. Lewis, CFE, replaced outgoing Regents Hannibal “Mike” Ware, CFE, and Alexandra Sagaro, CFE, whose terms ended in 2023. Caulfield and Lewis took their oaths of office during the board’s meeting in February.

Food fraud and more

Fraudsters are using dilutions, substitution, counterfeits and mislabeling to infiltrate the global food market; a software engineer in Washington steals from his employer in a scheme inspired by the comedy movie "Office Space"; executives in South Korea are convicted in a $1.5 billion V Global scam.