Mary Breslin, CFE, CIA
Fraud and the lure of corporate estimates
What if a company could significantly improve its financial results, regardless of reality? That opportunity exists today. The fallout from the COVID pandemic has made financial estimates increasingly difficult to calculate and open to manipulation and fraud. Here’s why.
Written By: Mary Breslin, CFE, CIA
Banks cratering because of poor risk management
Economic shifts, crypto deposits, weak controls and incompetent administration have led many tech-heavy banks to bite the dust this year. But none of the institutions’ C-suiters should’ve been caught flat-footed. Since the Great Depression, risk management has been the mantra of the money world. And we know that complacency and hubris can lead to fraud. Here’s how the bank collapsed and reminders for organizations to get it right.
Written By: Mary Breslin, CFE, CIA
Is ChatGPT the newest gateway to fraud?
Just weeks after OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory, launched ChatGPT in November last year, the U.S.-Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point noticed a spike in dark web conversations. The AI chatbot has astounded, but also unnerved, the public with its ability to do many human tasks from coding to passing an MBA-level exam to writing flawless text. However, in a popular hacking forum, a post entitled “ChatGPT – Benefits of Malware” described how one fraudster used the AI tool to recreate malware strains, such as so-called stealers that infiltrate computer systems, search for specific types of files and then remove those files without the owners’ knowledge. While the creation of malware is nothing new, the discussion on the dark web was disturbing because, as Check Point notes, its apparent purpose was to show less tech-savvy fraudsters that they too could use ChatGPT to code for malicious purposes. (See “Cybercriminals starting to use ChatGPT,” Check Point, Jan. 6, 2023.)
Written By: Mary Breslin, CFE, CIA
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