Combating Fraud Through Effective Internal Controls

“Fraud is not an accounting problem; it is a social phenomenon.” Joe WellsMost companies will not readily admit that their organizations may be vulnerable to fraud.According to the 2020 Report to the Nations published by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (“ACFE”), which contains an analysis of approximately 2,500 cases of occupational fraud that were investigated between January 2018 and September 2019, organizations lose 5% of their annual revenues to fraud. While this number is only a general estimate based on the opinion, it represents the collective observations of anti-fraud experts who together have investigated hundreds of thousands of fraud cases. Based on the ACFE’s study, the median loss caused by frauds was $125,000, with 21.0% of the cases resulting in losses of at least $1 million.

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Collusion, Conflicts of Interest, and Corruption!

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Investigation Roundtable on January 23, 2019, in Center City Philadelphia - Register Today! CPE/CLE

Investigation Roundtable on January 23, 2019, in Center City Philadelphia

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Robotic Process Automation: Using Technology for Forensic Investigations and Compliance

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Corporate Governance - Commonsense Principles 2.0

Corporate governance is the collection of systems and processes that an organization has in place to prevent or dissuade potentially self-interested persons from engaging in activities detrimental to the welfare of shareholders and stakeholders and helps to promote better overall decision making.

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Compliance Thought Leaders You Should Be Following

Compiling a list of thought leaders in ethics and compliance is fun, but so challenging. There are simply too many thoughtful people in this field — which is itself enormous and wide-ranging — to call out everyone worth following. So below is a small slice of the thinkers in corporate ethics and compliance that I try to follow.

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Today’s General Counsel: White Collar Crooks Share Certain Characteristics

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DOJ Refines Monitorship Policies

Ultimately, a monitor should benefit the company, its employees, shareholders, and the public by effectively furthering the goal of preventing and detecting future misconduct.

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How Tight is Your Grip on Cash?

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FCPA - Cash, Bribes, and the “Four Eyes Principle”

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Registration is Now Open - Class Size is Limited! Doing Compliance Master Class Training with Tom Fox will be held in New York City on November 12-13 (Two Days), 2018.

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News Release: Baker Tilly Strengthens Growing Forensic Litigation Valuation Services Practice with Addition of Industry Leader Jonathan T. Marks

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FCPA Settlement - Petrobras Board Involved

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Perfect Place Syndrome and the 10-80-10 Rule to Ethics

At some point it appears there was a human behavior theory that was possibly applied to fraud risk management and the 10-80-10 Rule to Ethics was born.This theory is based on the assumption that 10 percent of the people are ethical all of the time, 80 percent could behave unethically depending on the situation or the pressure(s) being applied, and 10 percent have no or a severely broken moral compass and will pounce on opportunities to commit fraud.

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2019 IIA Philadelphia Fraud Symposium - Update

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IIA Philadelphia Fraud Symposium - Hold the Date! March 22, 2019, at Exelon’s Energy Hall

“Trust is a professional hazard...verify”

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Putting the Freud in Fraud - Part One

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Internal Control Defined and Some Guidance

Compliance officers talk about controls constantly. Effective controls are the lifeblood of what makes a compliance program work. Most of us can rattle off examples of controls, or recognize a control when we see one.
So my fellow speaker asked the audience: What is a control?
Nobody dared answer. We all, me included, were suddenly uncertain that we could define a control correctly.
The speaker who posed this question is Jonathan T. Marks, partner at Baker Tilly and a prolific thinker on all things forensics, audit, and internal control. Lately Marks has been asking audit and compliance audiences to define a control — and to his dismay, most people can’t.Read Marks’ definition of internal control.

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(Advanced) Meta-model of Fraud - Two triangles combine for better fraud case comprehension

The Fraud Triangle is tried and true, but we might need more to understand our cases. The authors describe a “meta-model of fraud” that combines the “why-based” Fraud Triangle with the “what-based” Triangle of Fraud Action to better explain fraud cases. We might never know exactly why fraudsters commit crimes, but we can always gather facts and evidence to help prevent and deter fraud.

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