ACFE co-founder and President Emeritus Jim Ratley, CFE, traveled all over the world, teaching essential fraud-fighting skills. Despite the often-grueling nature of travel — lost luggage, delayed flights, bad weather — it was something Ratley loved, and he marveled at being a small-town guy from East Texas who had the opportunity to visit far-flung places.
“He never thought he’d get to travel and probably even leave Texas,” says ACFE President John Gill, J.D., CFE. “He’d say, ‘If you’d told me when I was growing up in Marshall, Texas, that I’d go to all these places, I never would’ve believed it in a million years.’”
Ratley’s globetrotting was every bit as meaningful to him as it was to the ACFE members he met and taught on those trips. “I was just in South Africa [for an ACFE event], and everybody was devastated to hear the news that Jim passed. People talked to me about when they first met him, what an impact he made on them and what a great instructor he was,” says Gill. “It’s a really nice legacy for him that the people who met him and learned from him still remember him all these years later.”
“Jim was a true believer in the ACFE’s mission – an evangelist, if you will. He traveled the world exposing people to the ACFE, and his enthusiasm was contagious. His love of people, zest for life and fun-loving nature attracted followers like a magnet,” says Jeanette LeVie, CFE, former chief operating officer for the ACFE.
James D. Ratley, CFE, co-founder and president emeritus of the ACFE, died on August 24, 2025, after a brief illness. He was 75 years old. Here, Fraud Magazine remembers his life as an intrepid police detective, fearless pilot and visionary leader of the anti-fraud community.
From his East Texas drawl and folksy sense of humor to the Southern phrases he’d sprinkle generously into conversations (e.g., “It’s so good, it’d make a train take a dirt road.”), Ratley was Texan through and through. And while he typified “Don’t mess with Texas,” that tough exterior cloaked a heart of gold. “Jim was tough and sometimes intimidating, with hands like cinder blocks,” says John Warren, J.D., CFE, ACFE’s CEO. “But he was a kind and sweet man. I remember him telling me about being a single dad raising two little girls when times were tough and money was tight,” says Warren. “He had to teach himself to braid his daughters’ hair (I chuckle imagining those big hands braiding little girls’ hair!) and spent Sundays cooking a week’s worth of meals because he was too busy to cook during the week and couldn’t afford to eat out.”
Ratley’s daughter, Leslie Simpson, CFE, ACFE’s vice president of events, remembers him as a dedicated dad. “My sister Sarah and I absolutely adored him. To us, he was larger than life — and with him, we always felt safe and secure.”
Simpson’s most vivid memories of her dad are of the small, everyday activities they shared. “Singing along to Eddie Rabbitt in the car. Friday nights folding laundry while he ironed, all of us watching Dallas together. Those ordinary rituals were what made our bond so strong.” Simpson recalls the first vacation they took as a family shortly after Ratley married his beloved wife, Gloria. The newly blended family was on a tight budget in Hawaii, and they all crowded into one hotel room — Jim, Gloria, Leslie, Sarah and stepsister Nikki. “I’ll never forget how quickly my dad could fall asleep — and how loudly he snored. We still laugh about it today.”
Although Ratley was Texas personified, he was born in New Mexico on November 13, 1949. Luckily, his stint there was brief enough not to interfere with his Lone Star State conditioning. As Ratley explained in his 2017 autobiography, “Policing Fraud,” his “daddy,” Harry (aka “Red” on account of his hair color), was a master carpenter working on the Tucumcari irrigation project at the time. Just three weeks after his birth, Ratley and his family trekked home to Marshall.
Ratley’s childhood wasn’t always easy. In his autobiography, he recounted how Red’s drinking problem would lead to his parent’s divorce. But he also had a childhood filled with love and good times. He spent summers with his grandparents and played football and baseball. As a teenager, he also made a little mischief when he and his friends would drive to Bossier City, Louisiana, where it was legal to purchase alcohol. Ratley would discover that college wasn’t for him; he dropped out of Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. However, he'd later go back to school and earn a degree in accounting from the University of Texas, Dallas. He also served in the U.S. Navy. At the urging of his mother, Ratley took the civil service exam. His experience working for the city of Dallas would lead him to join the Dallas Police Department where he’d lay the foundation for his future career as a fraud fighter.
As a rookie street cop, Ratley foiled burglaries, chased down speeders and answered calls from victims of crimes. Ratley would soon graduate to work undercover in the vice unit, tasked with cleaning up the seedier side of Dallas — arresting drug dealers and those involved in prostitution.
Ratley also helped establish the Dallas Police Department’s child abuse unit. In his autobiography, he recounted how he developed the interviewing skills he’d later teach to fraud examiners by talking to and getting information from the youngest, most vulnerable victims. He also perfected the art of the admission-seeking interview by building rapport with suspects to coax confessions from them.
In his last position as a Dallas detective, he worked in the internal affairs unit where he got his first experiences investigating fraud. He investigated fellow police officers who’d committed timecard fraud, lying about the hours they’d worked. He also investigated numerous instances of fraud and corruption that occurred in the building of the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport.
Ratley resigned from the force after 16 years but he retained his no-nonsense law-enforcement-officer disposition. “If you messed something up, he wasn’t afraid to let you know it,” says John Warren, J.D., CFE, CEO of the ACFE. “He still had the demeanor of the police officer he’d been in Dallas, and when he wanted to let you know he was serious, he’d fix you with a stare that would stop your heart,” Warren tells Fraud Magazine.
While Ratley could stop your heart with a stare, he could also make you laugh until you cried — Ratley had a great sense of humor, and his ability to tell a story was nothing short of legendary. “Jim was the best storyteller I ever met. He could make ordinary events sound like grand adventures,” says Jeanette LeVie, CFE, former chief operating officer of the ACFE.
Often Ratley would wander into Warren’s office in the middle of the afternoon to chat or tell stories. “He had a million of them, almost all of them funny, and each one delivered in his East Texas drawl.”
LeVie says that Ratley’s ability to tell a vivid vignette was what made him such an effective instructor for the ACFE. “You learned from him, and you had the best time doing it.”
“No matter the topic, he could engage with the audience through some story or anecdote that perfectly illustrated a point while making everyone in the room laugh and lean in to hear more,” Warren tells Fraud Magazine. “By the end of one of his presentations, the audience not only had learned something, but they felt connected to him.”
Sometimes though, Ratley’s stories were so fantastic (or inappropriate for a professional association publication), you’d wonder whether he was playing a joke at your expense. Dr. Joseph T. Wells, CFE, CPA, founder and chairman of the ACFE, recounts a story Ratley told him about an unsuccessful police department applicant who confessed during a polygraph exam that he attempted to have romantic relations with a fish. “I didn’t buy that tale for a minute. But then several months later, Jim and I were walking through DFW Airport when he spotted the polygrapher who administered the test. Without any hesitation, the fellow confirmed the unbelievable story as absolutely true.”
During an interview with Fraud Magazine, Gill reflected on Ratley’s many personal pursuits. He was a car enthusiast and skilled guitar player. He liked to ride motorcycles. He also liked to fish and would take others out on the water for his very own “fishing school.” But Ratley’s favorite pursuit took him to the greatest heights. In 2003, with his children grown, and with a little extra time on his hands, he started looking for an activity. He discovered a flight school near his home, and it was only a matter of time before he’d earned his pilot’s license and bought his very own single engine plane. He’d fly himself and Gloria all over the U.S. Southwest. But in 2016, the Ratleys would go on a great adventure — he flew them to Havana, Cuba, for a tour of the Caribbean island country.
There was a time when many organizations would treat instances of fraud as something better left unmentioned — something not meant for polite conversation. But the ACFE, with Ratley traveling and lecturing to anti-fraud professionals, changed all that.
“Talking openly about fraud was new at the time, and a lot of organizations didn’t even like to use the word. Many accounting standards didn’t even use it,” says Gill. “I think a lot of what Jim did was make it OK to talk about fraud. It doesn’t make you a bad organization if you have it.”
As Gill tells Fraud Magazine, Ratley talked about fraud as a reality of doing business. If your organization has money and people, there’s a strong likelihood that someone might have the notion to perpetrate fraud. But Ratley impressed upon attendees of his training sessions that they weren’t on their own fighting it. “He’d say that the job of the ACFE is to give you the skills you need to work in this area and be unafraid to speak up and say there’s a fraud problem,” says Gill. “It made fraud examination a real profession.”
Wells, a retired FBI agent, first met Ratley in 1986, “before the ACFE was even an idea.” Ratley had first learned of Wells in a 1983 article published in the Dallas Morning News about Wells’ firm, Wells and Associates, and his investigation into a fire at the Texas Capitol Building in Austin that killed a friend of the lieutenant governor’s daughter. Ratley was intrigued by Wells’ work and contacted him. “At the time, I was both the Wells and the Associates. Jim changed that when he left a secure career with the Dallas Police Department and joined my fledgling company. It took a lot of nerve for him to do that,” Wells says.
Many ACFE members have probably heard the story that the idea for the ACFE came to Wells in a dream in 1988. Ratley was game for the mission when Wells briefed him on the proposition while they sat on the porch of the three-story Victorian-style house that would become ACFE’s global headquarters. “Jim was the first person I told. He was over the moon. ‘An association for anti-fraud specialists!’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s nothing like it out there, and I can’t wait to get started,’” Wells recounts.
Ratley and Wells built an organization from scratch, and Ratley was willing to try new things to see what would work. “They [Ratley and Wells] drew up an application, created some information packets, got a mailing list and sent out the information. And people started responding,” says Gill. “Jim says, ‘well, I guess we need to start keeping a record of people.’” Gill described how Ratley started writing down the names of people who’d responded to the correspondence on a legal pad. “We didn't know what we were doing a lot of time, but Jim would say, ‘let’s try this and see if it works. He never gave up. If you gave him any kind of task, he’d figure out a way to do it. He’d never say something couldn’t be done.”
Simpson had a front-row seat to the founding of the ACFE. “At the time, I didn’t fully realize the magnitude of what my dad and Dr. Wells were building,” Simpson tells Fraud Magazine. “Now, I see how important it was and the leap of faith my dad took to join Dr. Wells. It wasn’t always the easiest path, but their partnership worked well, and they both had staying power and complete trust in each other.”
In those early days, the ACFE was a small organization with a skeleton crew of employees — not the way it is now fully staffed and with more than 95,000 members worldwide. When it was time for the first big information-request mailing, Ratley turned it into a family affair. “It was summer, and me, my sister Sarah, my stepbrother Matt, and some of the other staff kids spent an entire week in the conference room stuffing thousands of envelopes with brochures and letters,” Simpson recalls. “It was hot and a ton of work, but I got to go to work with my dad and watch him and Dr. Wells in action. It was the beginning of a movement in the anti-fraud profession.”
Of course, starting a new organization from scratch comes with a learning curve, and Ratley discovered that in his new role as an instructor. Today, thousands of Certified Fraud Examiners (CFE) across the globe can point to Ratley’s immense public-speaking and instructor talents. But it wasn’t always that way. As Ratley once told Warren, the attendee evaluations he received after the first class he taught were so brutal it made him cry. “The thought of big, tough Jim Ratley crying is almost impossible for me to imagine,” says Warren. Despite those bad reviews, Ratley was undeterred. He continued traveling and teaching fraud examiners. “He made himself into a great speaker by sheer force of will and determination,” says Warren.
“I don’t have data to prove this, but I’d be willing to bet that in his career, Jim provided training to more anti-fraud professionals than anyone else who has ever lived,” Warren tells Fraud Magazine. “There are tens of thousands of people in our profession who attended one of Jim’s courses or heard him speak, and he touched every one of them in some way. I doubt there is anyone who has had a greater impact on our profession than Jim Ratley.”
When Ratley retired from the ACFE in 2018, he’d been president of the company since 2006. At his retirement party, he was honored with one of ACFE’s office buildings named after him. And despite being retired, he’d still attend major ACFE events. For years to come, Ratley was a fixture at ACFE Global Fraud Conferences.
A guiding principle of the ACFE is providing dedicated service to its members, and Ratley set the standard. When an attendee of a training session learned that her flight had been canceled and didn’t have the money to stay in a hotel for the night, she became Ratley’s houseguest for the evening. He dropped her off at the airport the following morning to catch a flight.
“Dr. Wells and Jim strongly believed that serving members was priority No. 1, and that the success of the ACFE would naturally flow from the value provided,” says LeVie. “He espoused the same principles in the office on his daily walkabouts, getting to know the staff and constantly driving home the importance of providing exceptional service to members.”
Providing the best experiences for attendees of any training session or event was another one of Ratley’s guiding principles for ACFE members. “Jim never wanted to sacrifice on a quality experience. He wanted the venue, the food, the atmosphere and training materials to be high quality,” says Gill.
And those high-quality experiences were meant to extend beyond the events. Ratley would often say that he wanted attendees to learn something they could use first thing Monday morning when they returned to the office. According to Dick Carozza, CFE, editor-in-chief emeritus of Fraud Magazine, Ratley would always provide his email address, phone number and LinkedIn account information in the last PowerPoint slide of any training session he’d give. It was another way that Ratley was in service to his anti-fraud compatriots. “He’d routinely call ACFE class and conference attendees after he’d arrive home,” says Carozza. “He said he wanted to continue professional relationships long after he’d met members. ‘This is a battle, and we’re fighting side by side,’ he said.”
Ratley was adamant that members get their money’s worth when they attended a training session, even if it meant giving them their money back if they weren’t happy. Gill recounts the time a member was so dissatisfied with a course that he wrote a letter (yes, a letter — this is an old story) explaining that the ACFE had misrepresented what it was about. Even though Gill says the member was mistaken, Ratley directed that the member get a refund no matter what. The unhappy customer was transformed into a satisfied customer and remained an ACFE member for many, many years, Gill tells Fraud Magazine.
Simpson says that her father’s legacy is ultimately one of service and caring deeply that members always felt valued. If someone wasn’t happy, says Simpson, her father wanted the ACFE to be the association that would make it right, and he wanted to ensure that when a member needed help, they’d speak to a live person who could solve their problem.
“That spirit of service and empowering staff to do the right thing was at the heart of how he led. From my perspective, his contributions were remarkable. He helped create not just an association that cares about its members and its staff, but an entire profession that gave anti-fraud professionals credibility and a community,” says Simpson. “He had a gift for connecting with people and inspiring them to do their best work. His and Dr. Wells’ vision created something that will last for generations.”
Jennifer Liebman, CFE, is the editor-in-chief of Fraud Magazine. Contact her at jliebman@ACFE.com.
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