Marie Rice, Ph.D., CFE

As president of the Justice for Fraud Victims Project, Marie Rice, Ph.D., CFE, helps mitigate fraud risks for individuals, small businesses and nonprofits. She’s an assistant professor at Siena University, and values taking time to listen to clients and exercising empathy in her fraud examinations. 

Interview by Anna Brahce

I was born and raised in southeast Connecticut and am the third generation in my family to have been born in the same hospital. The towns along the Connecticut and Rhode Island coastline have always felt like home and are now favorite family vacation spots. 

Growing up, I enjoyed dancing, singing and writing. My musical interests ranged from Motown to heavy metal. I still love to dance whenever I can, and I enjoyed seeing The Marshall Tucker Band at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) Foundation Fundraising Concert during the 36th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference last year in Nashville, Tennessee.

As a nontraditional undergraduate accounting student, I had to balance coursework with my job as an analyst at a financial services firm while raising a young family. During my junior year, I also became a whistleblower in a financial reporting fraud case. At the time I worked in fraud, risk and compliance, and collaborated with senior management to design management review controls and accounting processes for transaction anomalies and bad debt. 

The company I worked for hired a new senior leadership member, who I discovered was deleting accounts that I’d written off. I monitored the accounts and transactions as they showed in the accounting system, and kept a separate set of books and records that included the deleted accounts. I documented everything until I found a new job and handed in the records on my way out.

Around the same time, one of my professors assigned a project that required us to research and present career paths in the accounting profession. It was through this assignment that I discovered the ACFE and became a student member. For the first time, I felt clarity about my future career, and shortly before I graduated, I joined a public accounting firm that was starting a forensic accounting practice.

I’m an assistant professor at Siena University in New York, where I serve as director for the Center for Anti-fraud Resources and Examination Services (CARES). I’m also the president of the Justice for Fraud Victims Project and the president of the Albany Area Chapter of the ACFE, both of which are volunteer positions.

I manage cases involving nonprofits, small businesses and individuals who are often overlooked. I mainly serve those who can’t afford the services of a forensic accounting firm and who’ve suffered losses that might seem small to others but are significant to them.

The first case I managed involved an employee who found a new way to steal money each time she climbed the ranks for more than seven years at a regional medical center. As an accounts payable clerk, the employee prepared vendor checks, brought them to the chief financial officer (CFO) to sign and mailed them out. Early on, she realized she could change the payee’s name on checks to her name once they were signed. Instead of sending the checks to vendors, she cashed them herself. Her supervisors never noticed, in part because she never took vacation days and often covered for co-workers.

After a couple of years, the employee became an accounting manager. In this position, she approved payments but no longer handled the physical checks. To keep stealing, she began submitting duplicate invoices for real vendors. Once the hospital paid the duplicate invoice, she’d call and say the vendor had been overpaid. The vendors, thinking they owed money back, mailed refund checks to her. She then cashed or reindorsed those checks in her name.

Eventually, the board promoted her to CFO, where she signed and mailed all vendor payments and prepared the financial statements. The employee redesigned the cash disbursement process, so no one else saw her work. She also tricked the hospital’s bank by sending her mother-in-law’s credit card remittance forms with the hospital’s checks intended for the hospital’s line-of-credit payments. The hospital’s loan balance grew unpaid while she reported it as paid off. She also bought a new Honda Accord and paid off her mortgage by changing payees’ names on checks. 

The fraud came to light when a new audit firm checked the hospital’s line-of-credit balance. Although the financial statements showed the loan as paid, auditors discovered more than $120,000 still owed. A deeper fraud examination uncovered the altered checks, duplicate invoice refunds and fake credit card payments. In total, the hospital lost $163,000, and the CFO pleaded guilty to 15 counts of grand theft and agreed to pay full restitution.

The most important lesson I’ve learned as an anti-fraud professional is that people affected by fraud matter. Initially, as an accountant I focused on following the money, analyzing the transactions, and considering the impact of compensation plans and other business-driven financial motivations. But over time, I realized how much empathizing with everyone involved in a case is key to solving the puzzle, and more importantly, to preventing and deterring fraud before it becomes a problem. 

Now, I focus on learning as much as possible about an alleged victim, the alleged perpetrator and everyone involved. Taking the time to listen to clients and hear their stories really helps in preventing future fraud.

Initially, as an accountant I focused on following the money, analyzing the transactions, and considering the impact of compensation plans and other business-driven financial motivations. But over time, I realized how much empathizing with everyone involved in a case is key to solving the puzzle, and more importantly, to preventing and deterring fraud before it becomes a problem.

The CFE credential and the networking opportunities through the ACFE opened several doors for me in my career. Over my career, I was referred to or recruited for five different positions, and each time, the training, networking and recognition I received through the ACFE and the CFE credential contributed to those opportunities.

My career advice is to pay attention and ask questions. No matter what area of the anti-fraud profession you’re in, the details matter and asking questions will help fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. We often deal with inaccurate, missing and forged information. It’s too easy to create a fictional world, and the only way to determine what’s real is by developing a critical, growth-oriented mindset to continue learning and questioning what you see and hear. 

I consider my greatest achievements to be the students who enter the fraud-fighting profession and later return to share the value they gained from our time together. They often become partners in firms, executives in organizations or community leaders, and it humbles me to hear about their passion for protecting their organizations, employees, family and friends from fraud, and about the positive impact they make on their communities. 

Spending time with my children and grandchildren is my favorite activity. We like to play board games, barbecue, swim, and go to the beach or go camping. We have a four-generation household, from my mother down to my grandchildren, and I always enjoy the moments when we spend quality time together.

Anna Brahce is the assistant editor of Fraud Magazine. Contact her at abrahce@ACFE.com.