Insights

One of my favorite sophomoric movies is Liar Liar.  The story line is this. Jim Carrey plays an attorney who makes his career lying to protect his clients.  When he lies to his son and then misses his birthday, his son’s birthday wish is that he can’t lie anymore. The 24 hours that follow his […]

There are many incredibly sophisticated ways to convert or “launder” illicit proceeds. Laundering money gives it the veneer of having been earned legitimately and enables the launderers to integrate their ill-gotten gains into the stream of commerce and make it indistinguishable from money earned through legitimate means. But some criminal organizations are less concerned about […]

Boston Consulting Group recently surveyed compliance personnel from 250 companies and the resulting study revealed an interesting development on how organizations are responding to financial and trade sanctions. The study showed that the dynamic sanctions landscape is moving geopolitical risk toward the top of the compliance agenda. As a result, organizations with sanctions risk must […]

The more data that you collect in an investigation, the more time-consuming the investigation becomes.   Computer hard drives, smart phones, tablets, cloud storage devices and email servers are frequently a source of evidence that can contain an overwhelming quantity of data and open the investigation and subsequent litigation to questions as to the proper handling […]

The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act permits the making of small bribes for “routine governmental administration” known as facilitating or “grease payments”. While including this exception into the law showed a lot of foresight and a nuanced understanding of the endemic corruption that exists across the world, as a practical matter, explaining in a policy […]

According to the website: Live Science, contrary to popular belief, ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand, but they do lie down with their heads against the ground when they feel threatened.   Inexplicably, ostriches are not extinct given their approach to self defense.  Human executives cannot take this approach when faced with an organizational […]

Putting someone “under a microscope” is a way of describing when a person or organization needs to be closely examined to determine if there is hidden risk. Most often, an investigative firm to performs “investigative due diligence” sometimes referred to as a “background check”. Due diligence investigations can unearth important red flags of prior behavior, […]

Just like it is a prudent thing to look at your consumer credit report periodically for signs of identity theft, it is likewise prudent to periodically review your vendor master file sorted by aggregate spend. Who are your biggest vendors, what are you buying from them and are there any vendor names that are high on the aggregate spend list that are unexpected or unknown?

Most money laundering charges have to do with the criminals routinely transacting their criminal proceeds which in its simplest form is: Anyone who “knowingly” uses or attempts to use the proceeds of “specified unlawful activity” in a “financial transaction” with intent to “promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity” or “to conceal or disguise […]

How notorious a guy do you have to be to have a type of fraud named after you? Most successful frauds run parallel to the truth. Ponzi became fascinated with something called “international reply coupons” (a coupon that can be exchanged for airmail postage stamps from another country). Ponzi realized that he could turn a […]

There are three primary types of Business Email Compromise attacks: Fake CEO schemes, redirected vendor payment schemes and real estate title company impersonation. Each involve impersonation either by compromising email account credentials or “spoofing” a trusted person’s email address. The sender then either induces the recipient to send a wire or ACH payment under the […]

No one wants to think about it. It is an attack from an unseen adversary. Your money. Your credit standing. Your ability to get a mortgage or a line of credit. Your precious time. If you think you’ve been a victim of identity theft, here are a few things you should do right away. If […]