Managing Fraud Risk: A Practical Guide for Directors and Managers

Introduction

This Chapter on fraud investigations is basically divided into two component parts. In the first section I set out in full a narrative of the events of the fraud investigation case, of which the story set out is a short extract. I have presented it as a case study, although a study where all the details are kept anonymous for obvious reasons. In the second part of the Chapter we then analyse the key ground rules of fraud investigations from a general and best practice perspective and look at some other real life examples from the interviews with business directors and managers that I conducted for the purposes of this book.

There are a number of points to make at the outset in order to introduce the case study. The incident described above happened to me during the course of a large fraud investigation that I was involved in at the turn of the century. I was hired by the board and senior management of a FTSE Top 100 company to manage the case on their behalf. In total, the work lasted for almost 18 months and resulted in a successful outcome as the company recovered the losses it had incurred as a result of the fraud. Looking back, it was in many ways the complete fraud investigation because it comprised all the classic elements: meticulous planning; a changing crime hypothesis; the use of specialist covert investigation techniques; document analysis; interviews conducted in pressure situations; evidence gathering, storage and use; liaison with the police; working ...