I need to reply to four student's posts. Please refer to files attached.
Total / 100 Overall Score Close Module 1 Discussion Reply to 4 student posts No minimum amount of words. Just quality response. Please refer to the rubrics. APA reference. Original Discussion – ALREADY DONE. USE ONLY AS REFERENCE Go to the ACFE Organization’s homepage and download the most recent copy of the Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse. Present a finding from the report. Please keep in mind the finding that you discuss should be unique from those of your classmates. How does this finding influence what we need to do or be aware of as a professional? Student posts: See page 2 (one per page so you can answer following) 1- Victoria Martinez - Discussion 1 For this week's discussion, I found reading the Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse very eye opening in understanding different aspects and knowledge on fraud. One topic that caught my attention through the reading were the facts on how tip are the most common detection method, and is more than double of any other detection method for fraud (Page 4). When thinking back on tips for companies, it makes me think about how the accounting firm that I work at has a tip line that we can report activity while staying anonymous. I have know individuals that have reported activity to this tip line because they were confident that they would stay anonymous, the tip was not fraud related, but did provide the employee to report activity that they did not feel aligned with the company's mission and values. The report also states that employees account for about half of the detections for fraud (Page 4). The hotlines enables to employees to trust that their identity will remain anonymous, which allows for the employees to be willing to share information they the they may only have access to knowing due to exposure. A company that does offer a tip line finds that there is a reduction in the cost of the fraud activity and the fraud was caught faster than it could have been without the tipline (Page 4). In my opinion, I believe that if a company were to invest into a tip line for their business, it will help keep the moral of the company high, and reduce the possibility of fraud, in which could lose the trust of their customers and results in the loss of income in the future. It is important to offer such a tip line to an employee, because they are the individuals that work through the different aspects of the company in which fraud could take place, and can receive information from a direct source rather than through investigation or through a he said she said method. Bests! ACFE. (2018). Report to the nations: 2018 global study on occupational fraud and abuse. Retrieved from https://www.acfe.com/report-to-the-nations/2018/ 2- Michelle King Module 1 One of the case results in the 2018 Report to the Nation as published by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (“ACFE”) is How do organizations react after a fraud has been discovered, page 47. I found the case results from this finding very interesting. As stated in the report, internal actions taken against the thief only result in termination 65% of the time and 10% of the time the thief is either permitted or required to resign. This results in 25% of the fraudsters continuing employment which I feel is a very high percentage. The case results go on to state that of cases referred to law enforcement lawsuits were only filed 58% of the time. As stated in the Report, many times organizations do not refer the cases to law enforcement due to many reasons such as: fear of bad publicity, internal discipline, too costly and private settlement as well as a few others. In this day and age, an organization’s reputation is extremely important. If an organization has bad publicity it will deter future customers. In an article written by Barrios, the COO of Montgomery County diverted taxpayer dollars to a shell company and in the process stole approximately 6.7 million dollars. Unfortunately in this case the gentleman lost his pension and one of his houses in order to partially repay back the amounts stolen in addition to jail time. (Barrios, 2019). Governmental entities as well as other organizations usually wish to avoid articles such as this one. Taxpayers will certainly question the internal controls of Montgomery County and how such a large amount could be stolen without anyone noticing. References: 2018 Report to the Nation. (2018). Retrieved from Association of Certified Fraud Examiners website: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/acfepublic/2018-report-to-the-nations.pdf Barrios, J. (2019, March 7). More jail time for Peter Bang: Ex-Montgomery official gets 15 years for theft. Retrieved March 7, 2018, from The Washington Post website: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/ex-montgomery-official-to-get-state-sentence-in-67m-theft-scheme/2019/03/06/a1f80ebe-3f8c-11e9-9361-301ffb5bd5e6_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.923c204bbcbd 3- Discussion 1: Perpetrator’s Tenure The area within the Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, I found interesting was “Perpetrator’s Tenure”. The finding determined that employees who have been employed between 1-5 years is the largest group of fraud perpetrators (ACFE,2018). However, the median loss enlarged as the perpetrator’s tenure increased. What I find even more interesting, according to the report, is the fact that employees with long tenure potentially commit these crimes due to their familiarity with anti-fraud controls. It also stated that employees who had been employed for more than 10 years, may be in higher positions of authority. Which leads them to undermining the organization and lacking ethical standards. In my opinion, segregation of duty should be enforced to minimize fraudulent acts at all levels. As a professional, this report reminds that training on ethics, signs of fraud, how to report fraud is necessary. Providing the training can equip all employees with essential tools to handle fraud when/if they observe it. ACFE. (2018). Report to the nations: 2018 global study on occupational fraud and abuse. Retrieved from https://www.acfe.com/report-to-the-nations/2018/ 4- Module 1 Discussion/ Darrell Crenshaw Oil and gas corruption After reading through the Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, what I found was the oil and gas industry corruption numbers where in second place to mining on the corruption cases by industry list. There are others on the list, but oil and gas are natural resources that run our vehicles, heat our houses, provide an variety of benefits to our daily lives and at the heart of these natural resources, there is corruption among the industries that provide the world with its resources. According to the Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse as of its release date, oil and gas industries have a 57.1% of cases involving corruption among the total number of cases reported. First we have to understand what corruption is and according to our textbook, “corruption is when fraudsters wrongfully use their influence in a business transaction in order to procure some benefit(s) for themselves or another person, contrary to their duty to their employer or the rights of another.” (Wells, 2014). When executives participate in corruption, they create situations that mislead there organization as well as the public when they use their position for personal gain at the hands of shareholders and constituencies. In countries that produce oil such as “Iraq, Libya and Nigeria, oil sales have in past years generated over half of total government revenues.”(Sayne, A.,Gillies, A., resourcegovernance.org (2016)). To create corruption dealing with extractive resources, diminishes the integrity of trade transactions among countries and the corporations. To fight against corruption, more global recognition is needed for trading transparency. This would increase the need for company/corporations disclosure of payments to governments for the buying and selling of extracted resources (gas, coal, oil, minerals) reducing the hidden movement of finances and resources among the organizations to give a better transparency to transactions. References Wells, J. T. (2014). Principles of fraud examination(4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. ACFE. (2018). 2018 report to the nations (Rep.). Retrieved March 7, 2019, from https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/acfepublic/2018-report-to-the-nations.pdf Sayne, Aaron.,Gillies,Alexandra.(2016) Initial Evidence of Corruption Risks in Government Oil and Gas Sales. Retrieved from https://resourcegovernance.org/sites/default/files/documents/nrgi_trading-corruption-risk.pdf