(By Vic Hartman) Georgia State University Chair of Criminal Justice Richard Wright notes in his recent TEDTalk that there’s a dramatic crime shift from street crime to digital crime. Accordingly, we have a whole new class of victims. In fact, frauds on the Internet are increasing exponentially. In one scam alone, the FBI estimates that […]
—Bethany McLean (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 […]
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, […]
(By Joseph W. Koletar) The Economist Magazine of March 26, 2016 carried the following article on p. 85: “Clinical Trials: For my next trick…” It recounts the experience of drug company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) with a drug called Paxil. Coming to market in 1992, it was presented as a treatment for depression. Some years later it […]
(By Dr. Joseph W. Koletar) While there are hundreds of dishonest ways one person can take money from another person they fall into three basic categories. In reverse order of frequency they are: • Force, or Threat of Force (We call these Armed Robbery, Extortion, and Kidnapping); • Stealth (We call these Auto […]
(By Dr. Joseph W. Koletar) It is not unusual for financial sector brigands to express some remorse once their misdeeds have come to light. Such actions may be lucrative – paid speaking engagements, advising corporate Boards on why they should be more attentive, etc. The Wall Street Journal of April 30 – May 1, 2016 […]
(By Joseph W. Koletar) On March 28, 2016, Niall Ferguson, Professor of History at Harvard, published his thoughts that to defeat a network such as ISIS will require a countervailing network of countries, agencies, and people in many fields. This is not unlike the movie, The Imitation Game, which recounted the efforts of Alan Turing, […]
(By Jack Bigelow) Corporate fraud prevention and detection tools include organizational structure design, tests, checklists, “healthy skepticism,” and other nonpersonal procedures targeting financial mischief. But there’s growing interest now in looking at the deep psychological influences on managers committing fraud, to see why (beyond the surface factor of greed) they do it. We call this […]
WHERE HAVE ALL THE NEIGHBORS GONE? KEEPING UP WITH THE CEO JONESES (By Joseph W. Koletar) When someone hits the lottery by blind luck, peace and happiness spread throughout the land, right? Perhaps not. Perhaps all that happens is that the fires of jealousy get fueled. The Wall Street Journal of February 17, 2016 (page […]
(By Joseph W. Koletar) For decades much organizational and public policy has been made on the presumption that corruption is a result of poverty or low pay. A new study reported in The Economist (“The Wages of Sin,” January 30, 2016, p. 65) may turn that presumption on its head. The study, by American economists […]