(By Jack Bigelow) Bethany McLean is one of the foremost business journalists of our time. She uncovered the story of Enron, then covered it by writing (with Peter Elkind), The Smartest Guys in the Room. She explores (with Joe Nocera) the greed and sleaze of the financial crisis in All The Devils Are Here, and […]
(Blog Posting I) The world isn’t run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It’s run by ones and zeros—little bits of data—it’s all electrons…There’s a war out there, a world war. It’s not about who has the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information—what we see and hear, how we work, what we […]
(By Daven Morrison, M.D.) As Joe Koletar noted in a recent blog, there is a group dynamic that has been at the heart of our “bad bushel” model since our first explorations of A.B.C. in a paper entitled: “Bringing Freud to Fraud”. The push to be always keeping up with the Jones is often more […]
(By Jack Bigelow) Bethany McLean is one of the foremost business journalists of our time. She uncovered the story of Enron, then covered it by writing (with Peter Elkind), The Smartest Guys in the Room. She explores (with Joe Nocera) the greed and sleaze of the financial crisis in All The Devils Are Here, and […]
(By Dr. Joseph W. Koletar) In matters of fraud we tend to think most often of the motives of the perpetrator. Thanks to the work of our colleague, Dr. Daven Morrison, we now also begin to explore the psychology of the victim(s.) But, one key player in the “script” of a fraud has been little […]
(By Dr. Joseph W. Koletar) It is perhaps the oldest question in the world: A child asking a parent, “Why is the sky blue?” As adults, in the world of governmental and corporate affairs, we ask our own version of that simple question: “Why did they do it?” Think of Madoff, Skilling, and so many […]
(By Jack Bigelow) Bethany McLean is one of the foremost business journalists of our time. She uncovered the story of Enron, then covered it by writing (with Peter Elkind), The Smartest Guys in the Room. She explores (with Joe Nocera) the greed and sleaze of the financial crisis in All The Devils Are Here, and […]
(By Sri Ramamoorti) In, A.B.C.’s of Behavioral Forensics: Applying Psychology to Financial Fraud Prevention and Detection (Wiley, 2013, see esp. Chapter 6 of the ABC book), my co-authors and I distinguish the predator from the “accidental fraudster,” calling the former the “malignant bad apple” and the latter, the “benign bad apple.” Predators are highly motivated […]
Aaron Beam is the former CFO and co-founder of HealthSouth. For his role in participating in the HealthSouth financial statement fraud in 1996 (soon after which he had left the company), he was prosecuted and sentenced in 2003 to 3 months in a minimum-security prison and had his CPA license revoked. For over 10 years, […]
(When Logic Finishes Second) (By Dr. Joseph W. Koletar) The Wall Street Journal of May 26, 2016 carried the following front-page article: “Deal With Theranos Haunts Walgreens” The article recounts the long and somewhat confusing saga of an old drug store chain and a young “up-start” company called Theranos. In the Spring of 2011, the […]