People are hoping that the Theranos case means that the DOJ will finally start prosecuting high-tech fraud, but many folks don’t think that this will necessarily mean that the DOJ has developed a spine for this industry. As the NYT writers pointed out, executives are rarely charged with fraud, and even less often convicted.
Singing the Varsity Blues
Operation Varsity Blues, the multi-million dollar college admissions scandal involving 52 defendants, including celebrities, coaches, college admissions and business people, holds the dubious distinction of being the largest college admissions scandal in the history of the United States. The mastermind orchestrating the bribes, William “Rick” Singer, CEO of his charity, the Key Worldwide Foundation, funneled… [Read More]
Crisis of Conscience: Is Fraud on the Upswing?
Journalist Tom Mueller’s most recent book, Crisis of Conscience, Whistleblowing In An Age of Fraud, was the focus of a recent McCuistion TV program on KERA, PBS Dallas. Dr. Mueller and Marianne Jennings, JD, Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University and author of The Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse, joined hosts Jim Falk and Dennis McCuistion to talk… [Read More]
How to Stamp Out Fraud!
Is your organization immune from fraud? The 2019 Annual Fraud Conference recently held at the University of Texas at Dallas gave practical steps to assure you are. The conference was an outstanding success and I was honored to have been part of it once again. The conference attendees; internal auditors, CPA’s, faculty and students, learned… [Read More]
What do Lehman Brothers, Enron, and Citigroup Have in Common?
What did WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, Enron, Tyco, HealthSouth, AIG, and many other well known companies have in common? In the last decade-and-a-half, we have seen some of the biggest accounting scandals in history. This last week, I had the privilege of speaking to the Texas Association of College and University Auditors,… [Read More]
The Elephant in the Room – Why no TBTF Prosecutions?
The elephant in the room is still why there have been no criminal prosecutions of the banks, executives and Wall Street traders who were primarily responsible for the 2008 financial crisis. There has been no obvious answer, although our Department of Justice continues to dance around the question. In his most recent article, my friend… [Read More]
The DOJ Lemon Award – Go Directly to Jail!
William K. Black, a professor of Economics and Law, UMKC, a former financial regulator and author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is To Own One, and one of our Bank Whistleblowers United (BWU) co-founders has decided we could “retire” our series of BWU Lemon Awards and permanently award “a Lemon” award to… [Read More]
Silence is Deadly. Lessons Learned.
The audience was primarily internal auditors at my presentation this week at the 11th Annual Fraud Summit, held at the University of Texas at Dallas, where I teach, sponsored by the Institute of Internal Auditors, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, and Information Systems Audit and Control Association. I talked about fraud and how as… [Read More]
