Teaming with anti-fraud pros of many stripes

Opportunistic fraudsters often have an advantage over CFEs: They can freely and spontaneously select co-conspirators by skill, position and corruptibility. To level the playing field, CFEs can work more closely with other types of anti-corruption practitioners. Their experience and techniques, when combined with ours, frequently produce extraordinary synergies that outfox versatile criminals.

Fraud Magazine recently spoke with veteran ethics and compliance specialists Jonathan E. Turner, CFE, and Julie Myers Wood, J.D., plus white-collar-crime trial attorney John F. Lauro, J.D., about how fraud fighters in their respective professions can pool their skills and resources to proficiently investigate and help prevent executive misconduct.

Seemingly successful Bankrate Inc., a publicly traded financial services company headquartered in North Palm Beach, Florida, secretly harbored frauds committed by some of its executives for years. If its internal fraud fighters in various departments and external auditors had been as organized as the fraudsters, Bankrate could’ve been spared massive financial loss.

In February 2018, Bankrate held a routine earnings call. The company’s CFO, Edward DiMaria, had scheduled the February 2014 teleconference to apprise analysts, investors and the media of the company’s financial results for the full fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2013.