Tag Archives: Financial

Behavioral Forensics Group Rides West (NACVA)

Accounting, Audit, Behavioral Forensics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Inaugural Education Program for the Behavioral Forensics Group

 

(Daven Morrison with Jack Bigelow, Vic Hartman and Joe Koletar) Last month we spent a weekend with the National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts (NACVA) in San Diego. In our inaugural Behavioral Forensics Group seminar our team had the delightful opportunity to share our concepts and experience with seasoned fraud investigators.  Invited by NACVA to provide education to their professionals who explore and track down concerns of fraud as they evaluate organizations.

The participants were curious about our shared experience in the human side of fraud and risk. They were not novices but rather seasoned veterans who were searching for new aspects of interviews, motivations and understanding. The participants were especially curious about our shared experience in the dimension of fraud that is often overlooked—the way in which the human mind works within fraudsters when they make that decision to commit white collar crime and justify it to themselves. Our impression was their appetites were satiated. The feedback was very positive and evidenced a need for even more training in this crucial area.

After an introduction facilitated by technology in which our founder Sridhar Ramamoorti was able to join the class by Skype from literally half way round the world, Jack Bigelow set the stage for the participants and for the presenters. His synthesized concepts and targeted quotes from the team and our text helped create an environment directed to learning, dialogue and to deeper thinking.

Joe Koletar then framed the fundamentals of fraud and the classic assumptions that reassure but misdirect auditors and financial minds. Bringing his experience as a former Chairman of the Board of Regents of ACFE, and his multiple decades with the FBI, Joe started the program off with a bang. Participants were intrigued with the questions he framed and the insights offered related to fraud prevention and where to look to find the evidence for financial crimes.

Not to be outdone, nor outgunned, Victor “Vic” Hartman, also of the FBI described the current fraud threat picture from a behavioral forensics perspective and with his knowledge as an attorney.  He expanded on the concepts of the fraud triangle and fraud tree to provide strategic solutions for professionals advising those in charge of corporate governance.  This was followed by session on interviewing basics for professionals including both legal and behavioral concepts.

Daven Morrison began the second day with a perspective on fraud that began and ended with the framework of an organizational psychiatrist. Exploring the role of emotions in the manipulations of the dark triad: narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy participants were alarmed. Walking through a model of core motivations, a model which highlights the “reversal” of rule following and rule breaking the cases shared were explored in depth. Vic concluded this second day with an exercise on professional biases.

As the cases were explored in depth with the experts from the FBI and Jack Bigelow offering his perspective from the highest levels of Arthur Andersen with the students appreciated and shared the many light-bulbs of insights the dialogue revealed. Both current cases and older cases were examined and all had intriguing applications for the theory and the experience of the group.

The Behavioral Forensics Group is looking forward to presenting a two-day session in Las Vegas in June, 2018.

The Behavioral Forensics GroupTM LLC is a team of professionals with vast experience in detecting fraud, understanding why it occurs, and in recommending steps to mitigate fraud incidence within the corporate workplace, particularly within higher-level (and therefore more costly to the enterprise) executives.  The fields of investigation, organizational psychiatry, accounting and behavioral forensics, and law enforcement are represented within the Behavioral Forensics GroupTM LLC.  Acting in synergy to help organizations prevent, find, and/or reduce fraud, B4GTM is a premier, pioneering practice in this field.

We are blogging at: http://www.bringingfreudtofraud.com

A.B.C.’s of Behavioral Forensics: Applying Psychology to Financial Fraud Prevention and Detection

Audit, Behavioral Forensics, , , ,

Get practical insights on the psychology of white-collar criminals—and how to outsmart them

Understand how the psychologies of fraudsters and their victims interact as well as what makes auditors/investigators/regulators let down their guard. Learn about the psychology of fraud victims, including boards of directors and senior management, and what makes them want to believe fraudsters, and therefore making them particularly vulnerable to deception. Just as IT experts gave us computer forensics, we now have a uniquely qualified team immersed in psychology, sociology, psychiatry as well as accounting and auditing, introducing the emerging field of behavioral forensics to address the phenomenon of fraud.

ABC Book Cover Page

Ever wonder what makes a white-collar criminal tick? Why does she or he do what they do? For the first time ever, see the mind of the fraudster laid bare, including their sometimes twisted rationalizations; think like a crook to catch a crook! The A.B.C.’s of Behavioral Forensics takes you there, with expert advice from a diverse but highly specialized authoring team of professionals (three out of the four are Certified Fraud Examiners): a former accounting firm partner who has a PhD in psychology, a former FBI special agent who has been with investigative practices of two of the Big Four firms, an industrial psychiatrist who has worked closely with the C-level suite of large and small companies, and an accounting professor who has interviewed numerous convicted felons. Along with a fascinating exploration of what makes people fall for the common and not-so-common swindles, the book provides a sweeping characterization of the ecology of fraud using The A.B.C.’s of Behavioral Forensicsparadigm: the bad Apple (rogue executive), the bad Bushel (groups that collude and behave like gangs), and the bad Crop (representing organization-wide or even societally-sanctioned cultures that are toxic and corrosive). The book will make you take a longer look when hiring new employees and offers a deeper more complex understanding of what happens in organizations and in their people. The A.B.C. model will also help those inside and outside organizations inoculate against fraud and make you reflect on instilling the core values of your organization among your people and create a culture of excellence and integrity that acts as a prophylactic against fraud. Ultimately, you will discover that, used wisely, behavioral methods trump solely economic incentives. With business fraud on the rise globally,The A.B.C.’s of Behavioral Forensics is the must-have book for investigators, auditors, the C-suite and risk management professionals, the boards of directors, regulators, and HR professionals.

  • Examines the psychology of fraud in a practical way, relating it to aspects of fraud prevention, deterrence, detection, and remediation
  • Helps you understand that trust violation—the essence of fraud—is a betrayal of behavioral assumptions about “trusted” people
  • Explains how good people go bad and how otherwise honest people cross the line
  • Underscores the importance of creating a culture of excellence and integrity that inoculates an organization from fraud risk (i.e., honest behavior pays, while dishonesty is frowned upon)
  • Provides key takeaways on what to look for when hiring new employees and in your current employees, as well as creating and maintaining a culture of control consciousness
  • Includes narrative accounts of interviews with convicted white-collar criminals, as well as interpretive insights and analysis of their rationalizations
  • Furnishes ideas about how to enhance professional skepticism, how to resist fraudsters, how to see through their schemes, how to infuse internal controls with the people/behavioral element, and make them more effective in addressing behavioral/integrity risks
  • Provides a solid foundation for training programs across the fraud risk management life cycle all the way from the discovery of fraud to its investigation as well as remediation (so the same fraud doesn’t happen again)
  • Enables auditors/investigators to engage in self-reflection and avoid cognitive and emotional biases and traps that lead to professional judgment errors (e.g., overconfidence, confirmation, self-deception, groupthink, halo effect, availability, speed-accuracy trade-off, etc.)

Ever since the accounting scandals surrounding Enron and WorldCom surfaced, leading to the passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002, as well as the continuing fall out from the Wall Street financial crisis precipitating the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, fraud has been a leading concern for executives globally. If you thought you knew everything there was to know about financial fraud, think again. Get the real scoop with The A.B.C.’s of Behavioral Forensics.

You can get your copy from amazon by clicking the below link:
http://www.amazon.com/A-B-C-s-Behavioral-Forensics-Psychology-Prevention/dp/1118370554