Getting Ready for Fraud Week 2013

GUEST BLOGGER

Scott Patterson
Senior Media Relations Specialist

It is hard to believe that is has been almost 10 months since our last International Fraud Awareness Week. What is impressive to me is that when we wrapped up the week of anti-fraud events and awareness, there wasn’t a sense of, “see you next year!” Instead, organizations continued to sign up as Official Partners and ask about things they could do in the coming weeks and months to further the fight against fraud.

We quickly grew to a list of more than 800 supporters worldwide, many of them already preparing for our upcoming 2013 Fraud Week, Nov. 3-9. And like all of the Fraud Week’s that have come and gone, this year’s grassroots campaign to raise awareness provides unmatched opportunities to advance the fight against fraud.

Supporters host various activities leading up to and during the week to help support the cause. For example, a two-day training conference, “Targeting Fraud – Safeguarding Integrity,” will be hosted Nov. 6-7 as a collaboration between Franklin University, National White Collar Crime Center, Ohio Ethics Commission, Ohio Inspector General and Ohio Investigators Association. The conference is a follow-up to the successful inaugural conference held during last year’s Fraud Week.

It is free to sign up as an Official Supporter of Fraud Week, and the ACFE provides training tools and other resources to help organizations shine a spotlight on fraud. Among the resources we’ve added to FraudWeek.com this year (so far) – links to Fraud Talk (the ACFE podcast series), our Fraud Videos Library and our Fraud Prevention Resources CD-ROM. More tools for raising awareness and fighting fraud will be posted in the coming weeks leading up to November.

Perhaps your organization will use this occasion to survey your employees to assess levels of fraud awareness. One easy way for businesses and government agencies to spread the word is by including anti-fraud information in blogs, social media, e-newsletters and other communications.

Also, it is never too early to start following Fraud Week activities on social media. Search the hashtag #fraudweek on Twitter for real-time updates and information about Fraud Week.

To learn more about International Fraud Awareness Week, and to add your organization as an Official Supporter, visit FraudWeek.com. We look forward to hearing about what you have planned.

ACFE to Co-Host First Seminar Ever in Gulf Region

GUEST BLOGGER

Anil Narayan
ACFE Global Business Development Manager

Bahrain? An event in Bahrain? That was the general reaction from my colleagues in our Marketing department when I announced that the ACFE was planning to hold its first ever multi-day public seminar, Fraud Prevention and Fraud Risk Management, in the Gulf region 22-24 September 2013.

The ACFE Global Fraud Conference, as well as our seminars around the U.S., draws a significant number of attendees from Gulf nations. In many cases, the roundtrip air travel time for members in the Middle East is actually longer than the duration of our multi-day courses – apparently only a minor inconvenience for anti-fraud professionals craving ACFE material.

When the Bahrain Institute of Banking & Finance (BIBF) contacted the ACFE in early January about a collaborative effort, we were immediately impressed with their organisation’s commitment to providing quality training to Bahraini nationals employed in the financial industry. Backed by the Central Bank of Bahrain, BIBF has grown over the last 30 years to also provide educational seminars on leadership, accounting, IT and Islamic Banking while expanding their footprint into 18 countries.

Having such a reputable partner in the region made the decision to hold a seminar in Bahrain an easy one. BIBF has selected the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Manama as the venue for the three-day course. Open to the public, Fraud Prevention and Fraud Risk Management details why traditional internal controls can be ineffective in preventing many frauds and how to combat fraud more effectively and economically. The instructor will also explain how organisations can integrate anti-fraud initiatives into their risk management programs.

If you are an anti-fraud professional living in the Gulf region, we highly encourage you to register for this inaugural seminar. With the expected success of this event, we are confident that the ACFE will be returning to the Middle East in 2014 and in the years to come.

To register and find more information about the upcoming seminar, click here.

Highlights from the ACFE European Fraud Conference

GUEST BLOGGER: LIVE FROM THE ACFE EURO FRAUD CONFERENCE

Allan Bachman, CFE
ACFE Education Manager

It's snowing here in Prague this evening. This is a big difference from last year’s European Conference in London when the weather was surprisingly spring-like. This year the weather is more suitable for a native New Englander who has been describing the below freezing temperatures as "chilly."

Indoors at the Prague Marriott it is much different, as well, as the conference has welcomed representatives from 34 countries at last count. There is obvious European representation, of course, but I am excited to also see people from North America, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. Once again, like the rest of the ACFE conferences, this is truly an international event.

ACFE President and CEO James D. Ratley, CFE, opened the conference with a new session on professional skepticism which mixed sage advice with his unique brand of humor. The luncheon keynote, Ian Foxley, is a whistleblower who is still tilting at the windmill of the massive fraud and corruption he found as project leader on a large multinational contract which reaches to some of the highest levels of government.

Concurrent breakout sessions featured a couple of returning favorites and some new notables including Pauline Roberts. Pauline is a retired FBI special agent and spoke on international investigations and how to navigate the waters of differing jurisdictions and legal systems. For her first outing as a speaker, Pauline was very well received and a pleasure to work with.

Tomorrow rounds out the conference with three more keynotes and several breakout speakers, but until then I think a walk in the falling snow in Old Town Prague is the perfect way to end this day.

Find more coverage and photos of the ACFE European Fraud Conference on the ACFE's Facebook page.

Top photo: Marek Dandar, James D. Ratley and Stevan Villalobos

Bottom photo: Attendees at the ACFE European Fraud Conference

The Mystery of the Eccentric Evangelist

GUEST BLOGGER

By Cora Bullock, Assistant Editor, Fraud Magazine

One of my favorite things about being part of the ACFE is the emails and discussions that fly around about the craziest fraudster news and headlines. One recent story in particular intrigued me. Aimee Semple McPherson was a preacher from the 1920s who left Canada to spread salvation throughout the U.S., finally settling in L.A., which was just teeming with sinners, according to her. I had never heard of her, but her story is incredible. I found a video of her online, preaching about Broadway being the "mecca of sin" (apparently sin stretched coast to coast). She's pretty, dramatic and waves her delicate hands around while bashing sin in the sweetest, most melodic voice, even breaking into song. So, of course, she made the perfect fraudster.

Sister Aimee was at the vanguard of the new technology of radio, and she was the first woman to preach on the airwaves (she ended up owning a station). She wrote plays, started two magazines, hired PR and media people, and her publicity stunts were legend. She would blast out sermons via megaphone from the back seat of her 1912 convertible, and burst into brothels and boxing rings to preach. She eventually opened the Angelus Temple in L.A., an elaborate, 5,000-seat megachurch where thousands went for her supposed healing powers. It featured a huge, lighted cross, so sinners could see it from miles away. The walkway between her house and the church had so many reporters hanging around, ready to report on her every move, that it became known as "newspaper alley." In San Diego, 30,000 attended one revival, which lasted five weeks and required the Marines and Army to help maintain order. She was a rock star at these revivals, dressed in a flowing white gown, speaking in tongues and imbuing the holy spirit into the crowd, supposedly healing the sick, giving sight to the blind. During broadcasts, she even told her radio listeners to place their hands on their radios so she could heal them.

And then one day in 1926, she just up and vanished while swimming. Her followers assumed she was dead and went into mourning, and newspapers reported her death on their front pages. "The Jungle" novelist Upton Sinclair wrote a poem commemorating her, titled "An Evangelist Drowns." One of her followers threw herself into the ocean and drowned, and one of the divers searching for her body died of exposure.

Five weeks later she appeared out of the desert in Agua Prieta, a Mexican town just on the other side of the border from Douglas, Ariz. She claimed she'd been kidnapped and tortured and barely managed to escape. But she was in good physical shape and her shoes weren't even dirty. Rumors spread that she had fled to Mexico with her married lover and concocted the whole story. The inconsistencies in her story caused a frenzy in the press, but two grand juries didn't indict her of perjury. In 1944, she ended up OD'ing on sleeping pills and sedatives.

Stories of such alleged fraudsters that I've never even heard of fascinate me. If you want to find out more stories like Aimee's, be sure to check out the traveling Fraud Museum exhibit at the 24th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference, June 23-28, 2013, in Las Vegas.

4 Checklists That Could Save Your Company Money

AUTHOR’S POST

Mandy Moody
ACFE Social Media Specialist

It sounds counterintuitive to say, “Happy Fraud Week” to my coworkers every year around this time, but I have to admit that I genuinely get excited for a week dedicated to sharing content and resources that ultimately strengthen the fight against fraud. Less fraud; more education: This, in fact, does make me happy.

This week has brought a multitude of tremendous supporters - more than 700 - to the forefront of the fight. From South Africa to California, I have seen seminars, conferences, white papers and more cross my screen over the past few days. We have had more than half a million tweets about International Fraud Awareness Week, and it’s only Thursday.

In the spirit of collaboration, I wanted to share with you some of the valuable “top” lists that I have seen light up on my dashboard this week:

• 13 Free Anti-Fraud Resources to Share with Your Employees or Company: Our FraudWeek.com website highlights resources, new and updated, for you to use to spread awareness.
• Cynthia Hetherington’s Four Tips on Minimizing the Impact of Fraud: The Hetherington Group reviews five steps businesses can take today to prevent fraud in the workplace. Bonus: Check out the five employee-monitoring controls.  
• Top 10 Reasons to Authenticate Your Suppliers: Your employees are not the only people who could steal from you. These reasons make it imperative to check out your vendors and suppliers.
• Six Ways to Reduce the Risk of Fraud and Errors While Managing Spreadsheet Content: With more data comes more risk for error. Heed these tips so you don’t end up on the wrong side of a spreadsheet fraud.

Find more resources, highlights and coverage at FraudWeek.com. Also, http://www.twitter.com/TheACFE and search for #FraudWeek for real-time updates.