Live From Toronto: The Future of Fraud

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GUEST BLOGGER

Allan Bachman, CFE
ACFE Education Manager

A couple of years ago at the ACFE Canadian Fraud Conference in Toronto my friend from Vancouver jokingly taunted me by saying, “You just think of Canada as America’s hat.” Not rising to the bait, I simply replied that it was not so, but I did think of it as very North America. Well I’m back in very North America, Toronto, Ontario at our 17thAnnual ACFE Canadian Fraud Conference.

This year’s conference got off to a great start Sunday afternoon with Don Rabon, CFE and 2011 Baker Award winner, presenting an advanced interviewing session on detecting deception. Don’s self-deprecating humor, native intelligence on interviewing and his instructional style easily crosses borders. Attendees raved about the session for the next two days.

ACFE President and CEO James D. Ratley, CFE, opened the Conference by speaking on the future of fraud. His presentation included enlightening video clips on risk and how to avoid the coming threats from hidden uses of technology.

The luncheons session featured Carmen Lapointe, CFE, Under-Secretary-General for the Office of Internal Oversight Services. Her five-year appointment is a challenge worth noting including audit, investigation, inspection and evaluation of UN functions. Her staff vacancy rate upon taking the post a year and a half ago was a daunting 25 percent. Today it is about half that. Her goals and objectives for the OIOS are realistic and obtainable. Her comments about her role and the role of her office were eye-opening for our audience.

Tuesday featured Richard Hernden from CIBC and former HealthSouth co-founder and CFO Aaron Beam. Beam spoke about his role in the HealthSouth financial statement fraud, making this the second year for us to feature a fraudster as a keynote speaker at our Canadian Conference.

Though it took place in Canada, this was truly an international conference. With 13 nations represented, including Canada and the United States, this was the more diverse representation of attendees since the Annual and European Conferences earlier in the year.

Wednesday a panel on bribery and corruption will kick off the day and the closer will be noted author Jeffrey Robinson, whose latest book The Takedown was popular at the ACFE Bookstore in anticipation of his talk. Robinson spoke at the European Conference in April and made such a great impression he was asked back for this Conference as well.