ACFE Faculty
J. Aaron Christopher, CFE, CPA
Assistant Dean
California Baptist University
Aaron Christopher is an Assistant Dean at California Baptist University, where he oversees the University’s graduate business programs. He also teaches undergraduate and graduate accounting courses.
Professor Christopher is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), a certification bestowed upon examination by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE). He is also an actively licensed and practicing CPA in the State of California. He earned his Master’s of Science in Accounting from Oklahoma City University and his B.A. in Economics and Business from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. He is currently working on his dissertation for his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University.
Mr. Christopher is also a graduate of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and served as an FBI Special Agent in the Birmingham and San Diego Divisions. While in the FBI, he investigated white-collar crime, including embezzlement, bankruptcy fraud, cyber-crime, public corruption, and bank fraud. He also investigated a wide variety of other federal crimes, including violent crime and civil rights violations, and was a case agent on the Alabama Church Arson investigation in which three men burned nine rural Alabama churches in early 2006. The case garnered national attention and involved the coordination of more than one hundred law enforcement officers from a dozen different agencies. Prior to serving in the FBI, he began his career in public accounting with Arthur Andersen, LLP, PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, and Deloitte auditing large publicly traded companies in the software development and telecommunications industries.
In addition to his teaching duties, he leads a private practice that focuses on providing fraud examination, and taxation services to his small business clients. He is active in his community, having served on the board of his local Habitat for Humanity chapter, as the chair of his church audit committee, and leader of a mission trip to Rwanda. He is the author of “The Kickback Mine: Vendor Fraud with a Kickback Twist,” in Bribery and Corruption Casebook: The View from Under the Table edited by ACFE founder Dr. Joseph T. Wells, CFE, CPA and Laura Hymes, CFE. The article was also featured in the September/October 2012 edition of Fraud Magazine.