The Informant December 05, 2013 Volume 1, Issue 3 Inside this issue: Brody Promises Unforgettable Training Session Dec 6th! Brody: I am a professor – I meet with stu- Dr. Rich Brody 1 dents, prepare for classes, and lecture. This is my focus for about three days of every week. The other days are spent researching, design- President’s Message 2 ing and conducng behavioral experiments, and working on presentaons and papers. I Brody interview 3 have been studying decision-making and ob- jecvity for years, and I am one of the few continued behavioral researchers in internal auding. I’m also an ACFE Regent, and am on the Member Spotlight 4 board of the Instute of Internal Auditors (IIA) Albuquerque chapter. The other side of Transitioning 5 my life is spent as an expert witness working from law on cases, big and small, civil and criminal. enforcement to AZ‐ACFE: We see from your CV that you got corporate life your start as a staff auditor at one of the Big 8, and held various public accounng and Chapter Member 6 industry posions before becoming involved selected for with the ACFE. What inspired you to become Board of Regents a Cerfied Fraud Examiner? How has it post changed or enhanced your career? What happens when white November Meeting 7 Brody: As a college professor in the early collar criminals become violent? 2000s, I was doing a lot of reading. Fraud was Recap This presentaon will change the just starng to become a hot topic – we had Event Calendar 8 Enron, Worldcom, and then Sarbanes-Oxley, way you behave when you go to and fraud was everywhere in the news. But work the next day. there wasn’t a lot going on in academia. I wanted to develop a new class that would We interviewed Dr. Richard Brody to find out address these issues, and ended up con- what makes him ck and get a preview of necng with Steve Albrecht, the author of a what we can expect on December 6. Register fraud textbook. Steve introduced me to the today – you don’t want to miss it! ACFE, which was just starng to provide edu- caonal materials. To get the free educaon- Annual Holiday Meeng & Lunch: De- al materials, you had to teach a fraud exami- cember 6, 2013 at the Phoenician. Sign-in at naon class. At the me, there were only a 11:00 am, program 11:30 - 1:30 pm includes handful of people teaching it anywhere in the lunch and 1 hour CPE for only $25 members / country. So I developed a fraud examinaon ARIZONA CHAPTER $45 guests. All are welcome! class, got cerfied in 2003 and never looked Founded 1989 back. I knew fraud was an area I wanted to AZ‐ACFE: Can you summarize your current do more with. Since then, I’ve developed posions and acvies? fraud programs for a couple different univer- sies. Today, almost every university has a Page 2 The Informant Message from the President the ACFE Board of Regents. All event, go to cfe-arizona.org. “Effecve Report Wring for CFEs can vote for the Board of Our featured speaker is Dr. Fraud Examiners” and Regents through December 31, Richard Brody, the 2012 ACFE “Uncovering Fraud with Financial and I highly encourage you to visit www.ACFE.com to cast Educator of the Year. I can’t and Rao Analysis.” Addionally, your vote and have a say in the wait to hear about his research the ACFE is bringing its CFE Exam direcon of our associaon. I on red collar crime – check out Review Course to Phoenix from am pleased to be able to his interview in this newsleer April 28 – May 1, 2014. Registra- support Joe, who I have known through his involvement with for more informaon. In addi- on for all of these events is our chapter for several years. on to the hour of CPE, we will handled through the naonal Joe has a strategic and inquiring be presenng chapter recogni- website at ACFE.com. Our It is an excing me for the mind; his experience and dedi- on awards and scholarships. chapter website also has Arizona Chapter. I would like caon to the profession will serve him well on the Board of As if that wasn’t enough, our informaon about the events, to briefly draw your aen- Regents. I know that Joe will event this year is at the Phoe- and a link to the registraon on to a few highlights— carry out his dues conscien- nician, which promises to be forms. you will find more infor- ously and with a desire to find one of the most beauful maon on these and other soluons that are the best for Thank you for your support of all stakeholders. Please consider sengs yet. acvies within the pages of your Arizona chapter, and happy casng one of your votes for our this newsleer. own Joe Agins! Finally, we are lucky to have reading! Secondly, our annual holiday the naonal ACFE offering two First, Director Joe Agins has Erin Hager, ACFE Arizona luncheon and meeng is draw- seminars in Phoenix, January been nominated to serve on Chapter President ing close. To Register for the 29-31, 2014. Check out FACT Did you know that the chapter currently has 248 active members? AZ-ACFE T-Shirts Available!! Show your support and get your AZ-ACFE chapter t-shirt Today! !! NNEEWW Shirts are stylish and really comfortable and come in a nice dark blue with many sizes available! Track down your nearest board member if you want one and get one before they are all gone! Remember—Christmas is just around the corner!!! Volume 1, Issue 3 Page 3 Brody Promises Unforgettable Training Session Dec 6th! - continued fraud class, and the ACFE is a huge On the fraud side, the research is sll in white collar crime? What happens when organizaon with incredible support for its infancy. We need more behavioral white collar criminals become violent? academics. research. I’ve recently been shiing my How prevalent is it? How accurate is focus more to fraud, and am developing people’s percepon of white collar crimi- AZ‐ACFE: You’ve had the opportunity to materials to help study white-collar nals? This presentaon will change the way perform research in many different areas. felons. you behave when you go to work the next Which areas of research have you felt are day. It could even save your life. the most intriguing? AZ‐ACFE: Tell us a lile about what you’ll be presenng at our holiday event. What Brody: I’ve been doing internal auding can we expect? research for a long me, and believe it or not, much of it is very controversial. The Brody: I’m going to say a lot of things that most intriguing to me has been idenfy- you haven’t heard before. I’m going to Call for Article ing decision-making biases in accounng talk about a lot of cases people aren’t professionals. People don’t want to be familiar with, research that you haven’t Authors! told they are biased. In a nutshell, when heard about. Everyone knows about the you are internal auditor, it’s hard to Report to the Naons, but there is also remain objecve. You may think you’re other research going on that people will Do you want to have an being objecve, but who’s paying your be interested to know about. So I will be article published in The salary? In one experiment, I had two covering some current cases and research groups, one playing the role of internal that you might be shocked by. As far as Informant? If so, please auditors, and one playing external audi- red collar crime goes, well, most people tors. Each group was assigned the exact don’t know what red collar crime is. A contact Joseph Agins at same task, which was a value-added, colleague coined the phrase, and he and I consulng type task as opposed to a com- are the only two I know of that focus on [email protected] pliance exercise. You would think they red collar crime. This topic is relevant for would all come up with reasonably anyone who has this type of job – fraud similar answers, but that isn’t what examiner, auditor, or any other job where happened. The external auditors were you might find wrongdoing. When people 100% objecve, but the internal auditors think of white collar crime, they picture were not. This is not a cricism as it really Bernie Madoff or Jeff Skilling. But what if I just explains human nature. told you there was a whole other side to E-Factor Training Success! e-Factor!® is a business tool that helps diverse teams and leaders work better together ethically. The e-factor ethics training on October 15th was a huge success and we thank Marcy Maslov for inventing and facili- tating this great training and also Apollo Education Group, Inc. for hosting this great event! Page 4 The Informant Chapter Member Spotlight Nancy Stryker, CFE Senior Accounting Analyst Salt River Project Nancy Stryker is a Senior Accounting Analyst at SRP and our former chapter Treasurer. We recently asked Nancy to provide and inter- view for us and/or provide some information about herself and her becoming a CFE. The following is the story Nancy provided re- garding how she learned about fraud first hand: _______________________________________ What is a Ponzi scheme? What is a CFE? These are the two questions I found out first hand on April 5, 2005.