The Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics is promoting the week of May 3-9, 2009 as Corporate Compliance & Ethics Week. Read more »
Hedge Funds and Fraud: The Future of Due Diligence
Garrity, Graham, Murphy, Garofalo & Flinn and PRMIA (Professional Risk Managers International Association) sponsored a webinar that focused on the signs of fraud and what you can do detect fraud in the context of hedge funds. The agenda and my notes: The profile of a fraudster (James Tunkey, I-OnAsia) The psychology of the gullible investor … Read more »
More on Madoff’s Auditor
Yesterday, Madoff’s auditor was arrested for falsely stating that the firm had audited the financial statements. No surprise that such a small firm could be auditing a supposedly large investment company like Madoff Investments. Just in time, the AICPA (that’s the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) has expelled Friehling from its membership following an … Read more »
Iceland’s Meltdown
With all of the focus in the United States on the collapse of Bear Stearns, AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Merril Lynch, we may be a bit myopic in not noticing other issues around the world. Iceland stands out as a country that has really run into trouble. As Michael Lewis wrote in Wall Street on … Read more »
Madoff’s Auditor Arrested
With Madoff in jail, it is time for the rest of his crew of fraudsters to join him. Next up…. David G. Friehling, the sole practitioner at Friehling & Horowitz, CPAs, PC, has been charged with securities fraud, aiding and abetting investment adviser fraud and four counts of filing false audit reports with the Securities … Read more »
You’re a Victim of a Ponzi Scheme, But What About Your Taxes?
You missed the warning signs and got suckered into a Ponzi scheme. Can the IRS help by giving you some tax relief? This is a critical issue for long-term Ponzi scheme investors (like some of the Madoff victims) who have paid taxes on gains from the investment. After all, they have been paying real taxes … Read more »
Can You Prevent Ponzi Schemes?
With Madoff, Nadel and Stanford in the news, people are wondering why the government does not prevent Ponzi schemes. The government should protect us from these frauds. How can they? Ponzi scheme sponsors are thieves. Common criminals. They just wear suits instead of black masks. The government has not been able to prevent bank robberies, … Read more »
Dilbert on Risk Management
Dilbert and company and looking at risk management software this week. Does any of this sound familiar? Ethical issues and bad data? Misunderstanding what it can do? Read more »
France Decides Not to Criminalize International Bribery
“France has severely restricted its jurisdiction and its ability to prosecute cases with an international dimension, which, given the country’s importance in the international economy and the scale of many of its companies, is very regrettable,” according to a report by GRECO. The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) was established in 1999 by the … Read more »
Approaching the Sphinx: The DOJ’s Opinion Release Procedure under the FCPA
Alexandra Wrage of the WrageBlog shares her experiences using the Department of Justice’s opinion release procedure under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: Approaching the Sphinx: The DOJ’s Opinion Release Procedure. Ms. Wrage takes us through the experiences of TRACE International in obtaining FCPA Opinion Procedure Release 08-03. The opinion release procedure for the Foreign Corrupt … Read more »