FraudBaron.com

Government Task Force to Target Fraud

webcpa.com | 1/11/10 |

Attorney General Eric Holder said a newly established government task force would crack down on the kinds of financial fraud that led to the Madoff Ponzi scheme and other losses.

Supreme Court Skeptical of Honest Services Law

ap.google.com | 12/09/09 |

The Supreme Court appeared inclined Tuesday to limit federal prosecutors' use of a fraud law that has helped win convictions of high-profile corporate executives and public officials, or throw out the law altogether.

Honest Services Fraud Ban Goes to Supreme Court

boston.com | 11/30/09

The most potent law against public corruption in the United States is in danger of being scaled back or struck down by the Supreme Court.

PWC finds Russia Tops Global Fraud Survey

reuters.com | 11/23/09 |

Russia has the world's most fraudulent economy and attempts to stamp out white-collar crime have done little to stop its spread during the global financial downturn, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a survey. Seventy-one percent of Russian respondents to PwC's global economic crime survey said they had been subject to economic crime in the past year, more than in next-ranked South Africa, Kenya, Canada and Mexico.

Embezzlement Victim Frustrated Over Fraud Sentencing

independent.com | 10/29/09 | $500,000 | suspect:  Cathy Latou | victim:  Debbie Niday, owner, Santa Barbara Olive Co.

I am writing in regard to the pending sentencing of Cathy Latou for embezzling more than half a million dollars from the Santa Barbara Olive Company.

SEC Names CPA, CFE as COO of SEC Enforcement Division

ap.google.com | 10/19/09 |

A Goldman Sachs executive has been named the first chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement division.  The market watchdog agency said Friday that Adam Storch, vice president in Goldman Sachs' Business Intelligence Group, is assuming the new position of managing executive of the SEC division.

Microsoft Releases Computer Forensic Evidence Tool

reuters.com | 10/14/09 | Fraud Detection

Today at the Digital Crimes Consortium, Microsoft Corp. and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), the nation's premier provider of economic and high-tech crime training to
law enforcement agencies, announced an agreement establishing NW3C as the first U.S.-based distributor of the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE).

A Microsoft-developed program, COFEE uses digital forensic technologies to help investigators gather evidence of live computer activity at the scene of a crime, regardless of their technical expertise. This agreement will make COFEE available to law enforcement agencies at no charge
so they can better combat the growing and increasingly complex ways that criminals use the Internet to commit crimes. This distribution agreement broadens availability for law enforcement agencies, building on Microsoft's April 2009 distribution agreement with INTERPOL, which is making the COFEE tool available to law enforcement in each of its 187 member countries.

A common challenge of cybercrime investigations is the need to conduct forensic analysis on a computer before it is powered down and restarted. Live evidence, such as some active system processes and network data, is volatile and may be lost while a computer is turning off. This evidence may contain information that could assist in the investigation and prosecution of a crime.

With COFEE, a front-line officer doesn't have to be a computer expert to capture this volatile information before turning off the computer on the scene for later analysis. An officer with minimal computer experience can be tutored to use a pre-configured COFEE device in less than 10 minutes. This enables him or her to take advantage of common digital forensics tools the experts use to
gather important volatile evidence while doing little more than simply inserting a USB device into the computer.

Audit of Long Beach Towing Finds Internal Control Weaknesses

presstelegram.com | 10/16/09 | Long Beach Towing

A lack of oversight and controls in Long Beach's Towing Operations creates "a high risk of fraud," according to an audit by City Auditor Laura Doud. "We don't have any hard factual evidence to prove that there was fraud," Doud said Monday. However, the department is vulnerable, she said.

FINRA's Missed Opportunities in Fraud Detection

bloomber.com | 10/5/09 | Fraud Prevention

 The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority didn’t fully probe transactions at Bernard Madoff's firm and repeatedly failed to investigate tips about R. Allen Stanford's alleged $7 billion fraud, an internal report found.

Some Background on Head Bailout Investigator Barofsky

cnn.money.com | 10/2/09 | Fraud Prevention

Bailout cop Neil Barofsky is on the lookout for scammers and thieves.  The special inspector general will soon release results of an audit of the money given to the nine largest banks, with a focus on the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger. He's also involved in a criminal investigation into that merger.