Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Donn LeVie Jr., CFE, is a staff writer for Fraud Magazine and has presented and served as a career strategist at ACFE Global Fraud Conferences since 2012. Now retired, though speaking at ACFE conferences occasionally, he has led people and programs for Fortune 100 companies, the U.S. federal government, and academia for more than 30 years prior to his becoming a leadership influence strategist, award-winning author and speaker. Contact him at donnleviejr@gmail.com.
What’s that smell?
Commercial fragrances and perfumes are big business, and the multibillion-dollar industry attracts its fair share of dodgy practices and outright fraudulent activity. Here we look at the difference between knockoffs and counterfeit products, and why the big perfume houses have such difficulty protecting their brands.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Develop a curiosity-driven workplace
Research shows that those with inquisitive minds seek novel solutions to unique challenges. Nowhere is this truer than in fraud investigations where curiosity and a healthy dose of skepticism are two sides of the same coin. Fraud investigators won’t detect many instances of financial deception if they don’t use curiosity as a problem-solving skill.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Bad leaders? Increased fraud
Do you want to make sure you have more fraud in your organization? Then hire bad leaders and poorly train them with outdated methods. Here’s how to avoid employee disengagement by changing attitudes and behaviors.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Who's more susceptible to fraud?
We know how the Fraud Triangle helps explain the conditions that lead people to commit fraud. But what about the factors that could cause some to be predisposed to fraud? Here are some practical principles to consider when you’re working with fraud victims.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Con artists hack your brain ... with your permission
When we have fewer emotional challenges, preoccupations and mental clutter we’re more actively aware of our surroundings. Our sharpened minds will be attuned to sights, sounds and other sensory input that can alert us to con artists’ attempts to hijack our emotions, our valuables and our dreams. Here’s practical information that you can give to your management, colleagues, families and friends.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Influencer bootcamp
Most people don’t like being stuck in obscurity in their profession. They want recognition and compensation for their value. Here’s how to build a reputation or professional brand as an influencer in your anti-fraud field.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Predatory publishing
Thousands of budding researchers and academics are unwitting victims of predatory publishers. After authors pay upfront, they receive little of what the publishers promise them. And many more desperate doctoral candidates and academics trying to earn tenure willingly turn to these shady publishing options because the competition for prestigious positions is intensifying. Universities often look the other way, and academic rigor suffers.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Develop your crisis leadership skills to motivate others amid chaos
You can learn “charismatic/crisis-response” leadership characteristics to help your people continue their jobs without wavering. Crisis leadership requires intensely focused, committed actions to try to eliminate uncertainty, fear, panic and chaos.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Flying the company jet too close to the sun
Residents of C-suites and boardrooms who exhibit the “Icarus complex” often initially soar but ultimately plummet from lofty heights and take their companies with them. Here’s how organizations can identify them in the hiring process and prevent disaster.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
‘Moneyball’ leadership
Leadership is part art, part science and perhaps a bit of alchemy. Selecting individuals to lead companies has become more complex for boards of directors. CEOs must address the interests of all stakeholders — not just shareholders. Organizations should consider grooming honest and proven managers from within to help prevent and deter fraud.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
'Value propositions' and 'set-up statements' are persuasion tools
Whether you’re promoting your expertise to a potential client, marketing a product to a possible customer or pitching an idea to your manager (or your spouse), you should first pique their curiosity before moving forward. You do that with a value proposition or positioning statement. (Business types once called it a unique selling proposition, but most have set it aside for this term that promotes value instead.)
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Fraudulent facets
Diamond fraudsters dupe consumers of all types, including savvy investors and collectors. The global diamond trade, like many other collectable markets, is at the mercy of the absence of transparency. Buyers must cautiously scrutinize gemstones and other low-utility/high-value objects. Here are practical ways for fraud examiners to avoid rip-offs.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Power of presence
Leaders at all levels should daily use such high-level soft skills as collaboration, creativity, curiosity, problem-solving, communication skills, conflict management skills, strong work ethic, adaptability, social awareness, empathy, emotional intelligence (the arbiter between the rational brain and emotional brain) and clear self-expression (the ability to clearly express ideas, thoughts and opinions in a variety of media).
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Mentoring can move your career forward faster
Whether you’re at the beginning of your career — or second career — or you’ve had years of fraud examination experience, consider entering into a mutually beneficial mentor-mentee professional relationship. This article is for both of you and everybody in between.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Cobalt blues
The battery in your cellphone could be powered by cobalt derived from copper that exploited “artisanal miners” — often children — hand dug from open-pit mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But a new DRC government could crack down on the illegal awarding of mine licenses, permits and contracts. And blockchain could make supply chains more transparent.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
What’s your IQ? (Influence quotient)
Learning how to connect with people emotionally can pay big dividends in any job. Showing empathy and finding ways to be relatable are an important part of “influential intelligence.” The positive use of language can make all the difference when engaging clients, interviewers and fraudsters.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
What's your leadership C4Q?
The C4 quotient — a combination of curiosity, creativity, critical thinking and collaboration — increases with the freedom to explore and innovate in our workplace. Backed by psychology and neuroscience, effective leaders can foster a more engaged and productive workforce, and in turn eliminate instances of fraud and abuse.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
'Thin-slicing' experience
Intuition, sensitivity to nonverbal cues, pattern recognition — our brains are capable of rapidly processing information to help us make judgments and decisions. This ability is called “thin-slicing.” It can provide another tool for fraud examiners to follow their instincts to the truth but only when we use it properly and recognize its limitations.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Counterfeit guitars flood global markets
The rising demand for musical instruments like guitars means more opportunities for fraudsters to take advantage of lax trademark laws and sell modified fake instruments to unsuspecting victims. The author, a guitar enthusiast himself, breaks down the elements of this fraud scheme and provides ways for music lovers and fraud examiners alike to avoid common scams and fight counterfeit fraud.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Why not getting the job offer isn't all that bad (it's fixable)
What? You didn’t get that job offer you were hoping for, even though you followed all the right strategies and tactics (hopefully the ones I’ve previously recommended in this column)? Well, you have no control over some of the variables in the hiring process, such as the economy, the fraud examination profession and regulatory compliance that stymies job growth, among others.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Three ‘gotcha’ job interview questions
We’ve all dreaded answering unanticipated job interview questions. When you’re caught off guard or just aren’t prepared, the tendency is to go with the first answer that pops into your head. Your response usually does little to improve your chances of continuing in the hiring process.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
When the Wright Brothers became fraud examiners
The world knows Orville and Wilbur Wright as the team that designed, built and flew the first successful powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine. However, few know that Wilbur and his older brother, Lorin, once came to the aid of their father, Bishop Milton Wright, an itinerant “circuit” preacher, to expose suspected financial abuse in the United Brethren Church.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Fraudsters’ slick olive oil switch
You’re in the grocery store, and you’re pleased with yourself. You’ve just chosen a beautiful bottle of extra-virgin olive oil labeled with a picture of verdant Italian olive groves. Unfortunately, the liquid in that bottle also contains soybean, corn, sunflower, cotton, hazelnut, peanut and palm oils. Olive oil fraud is rampant. Here’s how the oily criminals commit their crimes and how to prevent them.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
A bitter tasting
Some wealthy wine aficionados are comfortable spending millions on supposedly rare vintages. But if they discover that they’re holding hundreds of bottles of worthless wine they might try to unload it to less sophisticated collectors, and bogus wines will continue to circulate. Here are some cases to illustrate the problem and ways to investigate the fraud.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Espionage, exploding capacitors and fraud
Delayed responses to impending financial disasters can send shockwaves through investor and shareholder communities, and can create cracks in the pillars of corporate ethics and fiduciary responsibility. Here we explore how one high-profile company waited too long to respond to faulty vendor parts on computer motherboards, which led to compounded market share loss, accounting irregularities, customer lawsuits and an SEC investigation.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Facilitator, moderator or mediator
We’ve all been in meetings where prominent issues needed resolution, but after a couple of hours, the team made little or no progress. A neutral, third-party facilitator, moderator or mediator can help run meetings more efficiently and navigate all parties to desirable outcomes.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Managing troubled projects
During their careers, fraud examiners will inevitably run into major problems on a high-profile project such as a forensic investigation. Human interaction can be a messy affair and often a major hindrance in project management. Here are tips to minimize cognitive bias and other psychological pitfalls that sabotage the best-laid plans.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Linguistic weapons of mass persuasion
A vocabulary of influence can be an effective advantage for anti-fraud professionals when implemented ethically and with forethought. But fraudsters use linguistic tools, too. Learn how to recognize the difference between the two and not be fooled.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Are your presentations persuasive?
The ability to make a good presentation is a key skill for fraud examiners looking to advance their careers. How you convey your ideas is important. Here are some practical ways to present your thoughts, and it’s not just about putting together a visually appealing PowerPoint.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Pirates of the North Atlantic
Commercial fisherman, Carlos Rafael, known as “the Codfather” in New Bedford, Massachusetts, spent years selling thousands of pounds of misrepresented catch under the table for cash, laundered his money and overvalued his business to the IRS, among other crimes. His illegal monopoly predated well-intentioned conservation efforts of governments and citizen groups that inadvertently might have created an environment ripe for fraudulent fishing and reporting activities.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
On the brink of collapse
At 2:07 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) halted trading shortly after news broke that U.S. President John F. Kennedy had been fatally shot. The market had been on a downward slide, losing $11 billion in capitalization in the previous seven minutes. But hours before Kennedy’s assassination, NYSE president G. Keith Funston was doing all he could to prevent a potential market crash as one of the largest futures commodities scandals of the 20th century started to unravel.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Rebrand, reinvent and repurpose your fraud expertise
Achieving the fraud-fighting career of your dreams is more than just a matter of luck. Creating a strategy and executing a plan for cultivating your personal brand can help establish your skills and expertise, while differentiating you from others in the field. Here’s how to get started.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Out of sight, out of mind
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an increase in remote and hybrid work that has many managers concerned about declining productivity levels. Here we examine the latest buzzwords associated with the trend, how executives and employees are coping in this new environment, and whether “stealing time” is a fraudulent act.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Four strategies for increasing organizational agility
Rapid changes in technology have meant that work environments now demand faster decisions at all levels, creating the type of conditions where fraudsters thrive. Here we look at how organizations and fraud examiners can best face these challenges in an increasingly agile age.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
‘The devil made me do it’ and other unethical behavior rationalizations
Growing up, we all tried at some point or another to squirm our way out of being accountable for something we shouldn’t have done or said. (I admit to throwing my little brother under the bus a couple of times, but my parents were wise to that approach.) We spun the facts or rationalized our action to avoid punitive measures; in short, we wanted to preserve our standing in the family unit and stay in Mom and Dad’s good graces. But alas, many of us suffered some parental wrath as a consequence for our behavior — and the fictitious tales we told to rationalize it. Our parents knew something we kids didn’t fully appreciate: Rationalization allows us to wander further away on the far side of truth. As adults gaining experience in our respective professions, we learn about compliance and ethics, but we also add to our repertoire of rationalizations.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
The many facets of empathy
Empathy is the ability to understand other people’s emotions, values and behaviors. It was once believed to be too “wishy-washy” or submissive to be taken seriously as a valid approach for investigations or negotiations. But empathy is actually a highly valued dimension of interpersonal, communication and strategic competence that can help fraud examiners more easily obtain an admission of guilt from fraudsters and gain insight into their “why.”
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
Devising adaptive leadership strategies for volatile, uncertain scenarios
Leaders face accelerated challenges because of global uncertainty, uses and abuses of AI technology, and evolving workforces, among other factors. Anti-fraud practitioners grapple with time-critical decision-making and rapid situational responses. Here’s how to implement adaptive leadership.
Written By: Donn LeVie, Jr., CFE
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