Investigation

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.

A journalist’s battle to expose corruption

ACFE President and CEO Bruce Dorris, J.D., CFE, CPA, outlines Guardian Award recipient Miranda Patrucic's success as an investigative journalist exposing corruption in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

Tips and tricks for finding people online

Online records are a bountiful gift for almost every case. However, you need to know how and where to search fruitfully. Here are some pointers to mine internet sources.

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.

Fraud lessons from the ‘killer nurse’

Charles Cullen, a former registered nurse, is serving 11 consecutive life sentences for murdering 29 patients in 16 years at New Jersey and Pennsylvania hospitals. The author, who helped investigate the case, shares organizational deficiencies that have helped him in subsequent fraud investigations.

Tracking truth

Miranda Patrucic has exposed corruption across Central Asia and in Europe. The award-winning journalist talks about her experiences and the challenges she’s faced in tracking down corrupt officials across the globe and why they still evade the law.

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.

Treating fraud in independent pharmacies

Fraud in independent pharmacies has proliferated in recent years, especially during the pandemic. Here we discuss the different types of pharmacy schemes and what to do about them.

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.