...Forensic Accounting in Practice: Forensic Accountants: Fraud Busters A forensic accountant is part investigator, part auditor, part attorney, and part accountant (Levanti, T.). Due to the increase in high-profile cases of companies and individuals, forensic accounting is a growing and popular field in the business and forensic subjects. A forensic accountant is someone who is often retained to analyze, interpret, summarize, interviews and present complex financial and business related issues in a manner that is both understandable and properly supported (Zysman, A.). Forensic accountants usually work in a public practice or are employed by insurance companies, banks, police or government agencies. They are to investigate and analyze any financial evidence, communicate their findings in reports or documents and assist in legal proceedings, such as testifying in court as an expert witness (Zysman, A.). Determine the most important five (5) skills that a forensic accountant needs to possess and evaluate the need for each skill. Be sure to include discussion regarding the relationship between the skill and its application to business operations. I think the five most important skills that a forensic accountant needs to posses are to be: (1) analytical, (2) detail-oriented, (3) ethical, (4) responsive, and (5) insightful (Davis, Farrell & Ogilby). Analytical The need to be analytical in a forensic accounting engagement may be the most important overall characteristic, without...
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...someone on a personal level, such as if what makes a person a hero could be simply a person having a positive and exemplary influence on another individual or group of people. This definition opens the descriptor to be used for people who do not fly around wearing capes or bearing guns, the typical image that latches to the mind when one is asked to think of a hero. It is thus far more welcoming to our intellectually astonishing scientists, many of whom history and modern day scientists would deem...
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...A revised standard for forensic accountants APES 215 Forensic Accounting Services (Revised December 2013) January 2014 Publication No. 14-01 1 2 2 Introduction APES 215 Forensic Accounting Services (Revised December 2013) Lawyers and barristers working with forensic accountants, and in particular those acting as Expert Witnesses, should be aware that the existing standard, APES 215 Forensic Accounting Services (‘APES 215’ or ‘the Standard’) has been revised. The revisions are designed to ensure the provision of quality and ethical Forensic Accounting Services. In this issue of Forensic Matters, Fionna Oliver-Taylor, a director in our Melbourne office, discusses the key revisions to APES 215, which include: • Guidance on the types of services that constitute Forensic Accounting Services. • Extending the definition of Expert Witness to include Members ‘otherwise obligated’. • Expert Witnesses may provide opinion or Other Evidence. The revised Standard The Australian Professional and Ethical Standards Board (‘the APESB’) revised APES 215 last month (December 2013) to replace the existing standard which was originally issued in December 2008. The revised Standard is effective for Engagements1 or Assignments2 commencing on or after 1 April 2014, with earlier adoption permitted. The revised Standard: • provides assistance to determine whether a particular service is a Forensic Accounting Service and if so, what type • requires the explicit identification of...
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...oday, the word "forensics" has become synonymous with crime and crime scene investigation. Immediately conjuring images of crime labs, ultra violet lights and high-tech computers, popular crimes shows like CSI have brought increased attention to the field of forensic science. They've also generated newfound interest in forensics careers. The term "forensic" comes from the Latin and means, simply, having to do with the law. Hence, any discipline that has any ties to the legal system is, in fact, forensic. This is why so many job titles within criminology, such as forensic psychologist, are preceded by the term. With regard to forensic science, the term is now commonly understood to refer to the application of scientific principles to questions...
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...Forensic accounting is the specialty practice area of accountancy that describes engagements that result from actual or anticipated disputes or litigation. "Forensic" means "suitable for use in a court of law", and it is to that standard and potential outcome that forensic accountants generally have to work. Forensic accountants, also referred to as forensic auditors or investigative auditors, often have to give expert evidence at the eventual trial. There are several organizations worldwide that provide continuing education and certification for forensic accountants. There has been a growing need for this specialized field with recent company scandals that have occurred. Forensic accountants utilize an understanding of business information and financial reporting systems, accounting and auditing standards and procedures, evidence gathering and investigative techniques, and litigation processes and procedures to perform their work. The main goal of their engagements is to provide the answers to the how, where, what, why, and who committed the alleged allegations. They will use the same basic procedures for obtaining evidence of the crimes that they investigate. They will examine records and interview suspects to determine the answers to these questions. Forensic accountants are also increasingly playing more proactive risk reduction roles by designing and performing extended procedures as part of the statutory audit, acting as advisers to audit committees, fraud deterrence...
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...Forensic Elite: Detective of Numbers Tara Albright Strayer University BUS 504 Contemporary Business February 24, 2013 Dr. Jason M. Barrett Forensic Elite: Detective of Numbers No one in the world likes a snitch. In the early 2000’s the urban campaign “Stop Snitching or Die” changed the face of whistle blowing in the United States (Masten, 2009). Neighborhood violence during the “Stop Snitching or Die” campaign increased as law abiding citizen cowered inside their homes as gun shots rang out feet away from their doorsteps (Masten, 2009). In corporate America companies faced huge financial lost as the “Stop Snitching or Die” theology spilled into boardrooms and accounting departments. The corporate world was not as brazen as the urban world killing anyone that help out law enforcement, but the results of company leaders keeping quiet about misconduct slowly murdered the American economic system. While corporate leaders played their hand at boardroom gangbanging by lying, stealing, and falsifying financial documents, the world would see snitching taken to a new level (Masten, 2009). The job of combing through those illegal financial documents would go to an elite set of men and women, called forensic accountant. Forensic accountants help America recover huge amounts of financial dollars by bring corporate leaders to justice who made illegal business decisions (Davis, Farrell, & Ogilby, 2009). Attributes of the Elite Forensic accounting/accountant (FA) involves...
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...SCHOOL OF COMPUTING Bachelor of Computer Science / Bachelor of Software Engineering Forensic Computing Practice Assignment 2 Student declaration: I declare that: I understand what is meant by plagiarism The implication of plagiarism have been explained to me by our lecturer This assignment is my own work. Name ID 1)Nicholas Tan Tian Shen 0307878 Forensic Computing Practice Assignment 2 Due Date : Soft-copy submission on 10/11/14. Individual Assignment Question 1 a. What can a cloud provider do in terms of providing digital forensics data in the event of any legal dispute, civil or criminal case, cyber-attack, or data breach? Cloud provider need to provide the evidence by being forensically ready. To...
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...FORENSIC AUDITING As stated by Gordon Brown, the former Prime Mister of the United Kingdom, “what the use of fingerprints was to the 19th century and DNA analysis was to the 20th century, forensic accounting will be to the 21st century”. When people first see the word “forensic”, they naturally categorize it into a science-related field. According to Webster’s Dictionary, the term “forensic” is defined as “belonging to, used in, or suitable to courts of judicature or to public discussions and debate”. Therefore, forensic accounting is generally defined as relating and applying financial facts to legal problems (Singleton and Singleton 12). Forensic accounting consists of a combination of the techniques that are used in accounting, auditing, and investigative work. The focus of this paper is on the concept of forensic auditing; however, forensic auditing cannot be fully understood without incorporating all of the facts about forensic accounting. Most situations that involve forensic auditing will deal with proposed fraudulent activities, but there are some cases that may deal with non-fraudulent activities, such as settlements of monetary disputes (“Student Accountant”). Throughout this paper, we will discuss, in detail, the profession of forensic auditing and forensic accounting in relation to fraudulent activities. What is Forensic Auditing? Forensic auditing and financial auditing are not related in any way; rather, they have their own distinct objectives that are set...
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...Number: 1 Examiner Name: Date & Time Activity 2-2-2015 1:03pm 1:19pm 1:21pm 1:22pm 1:23pm 1:24pm 1:25pm 1:26pm 1:28 All steps performed on linux mint-17 32-bit, kernel 3.13.0-37 generic Tools used: dd (coreutils) 8.21, sha1sum (GNU coreutils) 8.21, xxd version 1.10, Eye of mate Image Viewer 1.8.1, Script version 2.20.1 Received the USB device from officer Linda Mood of the USSS Cyber forensics Team in an antistatic bag with tamper resistant tape. Her initials were written over the tape. I removed the USB flash drive from the bag. It was a 2GB black and green retractable Sony flash drive with the serial number of D33021. Using the mount command I confirmed that the USB had not mounted. Command: mount Using the date command I showed when I began the forensic work on the USB device. Sun Feb 1 13:21:34 EST 2015 Command: date Using the command fdisk I looked to see what the size of the device was and how much data was on the USB. It was shown to have 1MB or 1474560 bytes of information. Command: sudo fdisk -l Using the hash command sha1sum on the device I obtained the hash for the USB. 32b9fcb741aab43a4f80393d3df67c32c726924f /dev/sdb Command: sudo sha1sum /dev/sdb Using dd I was able to image the information from the USB device to another file named Ailes.case01.dd. Command: Sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=Ailes/case01.dd bs=8192 Using the date command...
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...To explain briefly how forensic medicine is best used it is perhaps best to look at this scenario; a body is found in a field with no visible signs of injury - mortal or otherwise. How did the body get there, how did the victim die, who might have been responsible? These are the questions that forensic medicine seeks to answer using recognized medical procedures as a means of doing so. Forensic medicine is also used to identify the victims of murder when identification proves otherwise impossible. And this can be done by using dental records, birthmarks, tattoos or scars, and other visible bodily signs. Indeed sometimes forensic medicine is called upon to reconstruct the face of a victim decades after they died using detailed computer programs,...
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...The word Forensic comes from the Latin forensus, meaning of the forum. In ancient Rome, the forum was where lawmaking debates were held, but it was also where trials were held just like modern day courthouses. From that, forensic science has come to mean the application of the natural and physical science to the motion of matters within a legal context. Forensic Science can be viewed as a tripartite structure consisting of a Collection, which pertains to the science investigation, Examination, which pertains to the medical investigation and, Presentation, which pertains to the courts. A forensic case will involve all aspects of each of the three structured elements, each being as important as the other. It is obvious that there needs to be a shared approach for the successful end of each case. Each step in forensic science must be done in an exact order; therefore it can be assured that the investigation can have few doubts about what is being debated. The purpose of crime scene investigation is to help establish what happened at the crime and to identify the responsible person or people. Carefully documenting the situation at a crime scene and recognizing all-important physical evidence do this. The ability to recognize and properly collect physical evidence is often times vital to both solving and prosecuting violent crimes. It is no exaggeration to say that in the majority of cases, the law enforcement officer who protects and searches a crime scene plays a significant...
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...society want to fight crime at any means necessary but at what cost are we willing to pay for this so called justice? In this paper I will discuss the ways that we use criminal identification. Some of these methods are very simple as well as those, which are quite complex. These are eyewitness identification, DNA fingerprinting, latent prints found on bodies, brain fingerprinting, and thru vision. Identification of a person means knowing positively who a given person is and it may be necessary to identify living as well as dead individuals in a variety of situations. In our day-to-day life, we do not face many problems with identification, and it might seem surprising at first glance that such a mundane thing as identification ever needed the help of science. We may meet a long forgotten friend, and may not be able to identify him in the beginning, but recollection of some events would help us recall who the person is. In fact, in daily life, many take the identity of a person for granted. (Forensic Identification) Criminal identification procedures in the 21st century is an ever-changing and remarkable endeavor that has become something that law enforcement has been leaning towards for some time now. The criminal identification process is a long, but unique way that our justice system strives to make sure that individuals are not mistaken for crimes committed in an act of an offense. Fingerprints offer an infallible means of personal identification. That is...
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...Forensics History Theresia L. Coates Criminal Justice 1010 Forensics History What does Forensics mean? How old is forensic science? When it was first applied to the law? How has the Forensic science changed the arrest and prosecution success of criminals? The term "forensic" comes from the Latin and means, simply, having to do with the law. How has Forensics evolved from the beginning until today? Let us delve into the history of forensics and its blossoming partnership with the law. Surprisingly, Forensic Science has been around and used in criminal investigations in some manner since before the Roman Empire making it centuries old. It has only been within the last century that law enforcement agencies and the court systems have come to rely so heavily on the use of scientific practices in crime scene investigations.1 The first application of forensic science was by the Roman physician Antistius in the year 44 B.C., whom examined the body of Julius Caesar. He determined even though the dictator was stabbed 23 times, only one wound through his chest caused his actual death. This autopsy is thought to be the first one recorded and the start of using forensic science. Here in the Greek and Roman society extensive knowledge was developed regarding the production, use and symptoms of various poisons, making it possible to identify their use in previously undetected murders. Thanks to these western civilizations advances in the medical field as well as pharmacology were...
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...importunate as well.” I was repressed this story until I was about 16 because that was about the age I told my parents I want to do something with Psychology. I feel as though I am someone who’s very accost. I also watch a lot of criminal investigation shows as well, which helps with the forensic part of my pursued career. I usually can guess why the assumed killer committed the crime he or she convicted. I already know a decent amount of knowledge about...
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...value of their company. Forensic accountants are becoming much needed as accounting frauds, financial scams, and various economic scandals are beginning to increase globally. This type of accountant does more than the typical accountant of a business or corporation, because their objective is to investigate fraudulent activities being used in the accounting departments of these companies. The amount of fraud being used by companies globally is most likely going to increase in the future as technology is evolving and scammers are getting more creative. This will also lead to a gradual decrease in the investment rates in companies, because the risks of investing in a corrupt business world will outweigh the benefits. Potential investors in companies using creative accounting techniques will increasingly become more at risk if there is no exponential growth in the field of investigative accounting. Accounting scams are becoming a part of the normal occurrence of day to day activities as this type of fraudulent activity is frequently gaining exposure in the daily news worldwide. As owners and managers conceal the financial state of their companies by manipulating their financial statements, the reliability and trust of these statements by investors are decreasing. Illegal accounting procedures are not being presented solely in America, but in other countries as well. In those countries with high rates of corruption, individuals specialized in the area of forensic accounting can have...
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