In Memoriam, Fabio Tortora, CFE

Fabio Tortora, CFE, past president and co-founder of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ (ACFE) Italy Chapter and an ACFE Authorised Trainer, passed away in June. The ACFE remembers Tortora for his dedication to advancing the anti-fraud profession in Italy. 

 
“Fabio has been a great friend to all of us, a skilled and forward-thinking professional, who has participated from the beginning in the birth and development of our chapter, and whose pioneering vision will continue to be a source of inspiration for all of us,” ACFE Italy Chapter President Elena Farinella, CFE, CRMA, RA, tells Fraud Magazine. 

Farinella met Tortora in 2004 after the Italian chapter of the ACFE was founded. They collaborated to grow the chapter and bring together professionals interested in anti-fraud topics. In 2017, they started the Authorised Trainer project in Italy together. Farinella replaced Tortora as ACFE Italy chapter president in 2018, and says she maintained close contact with him and relied on his good advice. “Fabio has been, for me, a great friend and a tutor,” says Farinella.

In 2013, Tortora founded Italy’s first fraud prevention consultancy to focus on training and risk analysis, Senapa Consulting. Senapa provides ACFE fraud risk management courses and the CFE Exam Review Course. Tortora was a senior adviser for projects in fraud governance and cybercrime prevention at PriceWaterhouseCooper. He also served as president of the Italian Association of Credit Reference and as a member of the Italian Working Group for the development of the Safer Internet Centres (SICs) at the Privacy Authority. 

He was part of the Italian delegation in a 2010 training project on privacy, fraud and economic crime for the Libyan government in Tripoli and lectured at Bocconi University and the Universities of Verona, Pisa, Ferrara and Tor Vergata. He wrote more than 100 magazine and newspaper articles in leading industry journals and co-authored books on fraud, governance and corporate crime.

Tortora earned an economics degree at Sapienza University of Rome and a master’s degree in business administration from Warwick Business School in the U.K. His first job was as a junior programmer and later business development manager for Banco Ambroveneto Group (now Banca Intesa). He worked for seven years at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and then for nine years at risk prevention company Experian Information Services. He conducted research projects with the Ministry of Economy and promoted regulatory activities to support fraud prevention in companies from 2004 to 2017. 

Tortora became a CFE in 2004. He served as the Italy Chapter’s president for 11 years between 2006 and 2018. He served as an Authorised Trainer in Italy for eight years beginning in 2017. Approximately 380 people attended his ACFE fraud training courses and CFE Exam Review Courses.



Anna Brahce is an assistant editor for Fraud Magazine. Contact her at abrahce@ACFE.com.