Site Map - Investigations

11/13/2007 - Lawmakers in Maine have enacted a new law (formerly H.B. 735) governing investigators from other states. The new law will allow investigators from other states to act legally in Maine without obtaining a Maine license, but only in certain circumstances.

11/08/2007 - A California appeals court has ruled that a government employer has violated an employee's rights by not letting the employee see the documents created and collected in the course of an investigation into the employee's conduct. The employer had a policy against sharing such documents with the subject of the investigation unless the punishment meted out was greater than a written reprimand. (Beverly Hinrichs v. County of Orange, California Court of Appeal, No. G028834, 2005

11/02/2007 - Forget reliability and admissibility. Polygraph tests get results, contends one author.

11/02/2007 - The Delaware Supreme Court has ruled that a McDonald’s employee, Susan Rizzitiello, cannot sue the company for wrongful termination. Rizzitiello was suspended pending an investigation of inventory issues. However, Rizzitiello resigned her employment and filed a lawsuit. The court ruled that Rizzitiello could not claim wrongful termination if she was not terminated. Also, the court determined that a suspension to conduct a workplace investigation could not be considered grounds for a constructive discharge—a situation in which working conditions are so poor that the employee has no choice but to resign. (Susan Rizzitiello v. McDonald’s Corporation, Supreme Court of the State of Delaware, No. 93-2004, 2005)

11/02/2007 - Careful questioning of witnesses and suspects can be the key to cracking your case.

11/01/2007 - For the basics, one of the best chapters categorizes fraud into three primary types. One is duplicate-payment fraud, defined as the issuance of two or more identical checks to pay the same debt for a service. Second is multiple-payee fraud, which is similar, but the checks are not identical. The third type is shell fraud, the payment of alleged debts for fictitious projects or services. For each type, detailed analysis and case studies are provided.

09/27/2007 - An FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin piece discusses various cognitive biases that lead investigators astray, and offers strategies to combat them.

09/21/2007 - E-mail messages from the fourth quarter of 2005 believed to be spam

09/20/2007 - Forensic Accounting and Fraud Investigation for Non-Experts offers an effective primer on how financial fraud occurs, demonstrating the critical need for accounting controls.

09/13/2007 - The wide range of white-collar crimes and methodologies covered here includes gambling, prostitution, money laundering, and tax havens. Some of the coverage is too brief to be of use to law enforcement experts, but the author’s intent was likely to touch on topics that affect the theory and practice of financial investigation and forensic accounting, not to comprehensively explore them

08/23/2007 - As employee background checks become more prevalent, many experts are urging companies to pay particular attention to their IT staff.

08/23/2007 - The role of banking regulations in fighting counterfeiting.

08/13/2007 - In a recent decision, the North Carolina Court of Appeals found a company guilty of malicious prosecution after it investigated an employee for wrongdoing, fired him, and then reported his alleged activities to the police despite the fact that the employee's innocence could have easily been ascertained, said the court.