Fraud Investigation

read the following case and play the role of the investigator hired to investigate the allegations. You are writing a report to your supervisor to explain aspects of the case and any details that may be of interest to your supervisor in deciding to take on this assignment. You will need to identify the parties involved, the technology frauds that you suspect are happening, who you suspect has committed them, how you would investigate each of the frauds, and what software you would use for your analysis.
You report should provide the following information:
• An introduction that provides an overview or summary of the case. The introduction needs to introduce you, what your role is and the background of the allegations you have been asked to investigate. 5 marks for this portion
• Identify the frauds you have observed, who you suspect is involved, how you think they may have occurred. 15 marks for this portion
• Develop a plan to investigate the frauds. Identify any experts you may require, who you would interview, what information you would take, who you would report to and any concerns you have about this assignment. 15 marks for this portion
• A conclusion that discusses the preliminary findings, hypothetical scenarios and what actions need to be taken right away. 3 marks for this portion
• This assignment should not exceed five pages of text, double-spaced. Feel free to present it in whatever format suits you best (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, table format, essay style, bullets, etc). Please take note of how the marks are distributed on this assignment as that will assist you in determining how much content you should devote to each section of the assignment. While it does not have to conform to standard essay style, spelling, grammar and sentence structure are important as they either facilitate or hinder your ability to communicate. Please create a title page for your assignment and, if you make use of any references, please indicate them appropriately. 2 marks for this portion
If you require assistance with report writing, please refer to the Algonquin College Learning Resource Centre’s student research assistance website.
CASE STUDY
The rain has been coming down for three days straight; the streets are like streams bursting to become rivers. It has been eerily quiet for the past few days at WeGotYa Forensic Investigations. You are a manager with WeGotYa Forensic Investigations and have been working in the industry for the past 7 years and have just wrapped up one of your biggest cases ever. For the past few days, you have been cleaning up your files and boxing up old documents to be put in storage when the phone rings.
It is John Smith, the CEO from Bright Designs, a computer software development company based in Kanata, Ontario, Canada. Bright Designs was the brain child of well-known philanthropist DeeDee Wealthy back in the hi-tech boom of the nineties. DeeDee took the company from an idea on a napkin at the local coffee shop to international powerhouse with sales exceeding $5 billion by the late nineties. DeeDee, while still the sole shareholder of the company, has not been involved in the day to day running of the company since 2001 and has, instead, enjoyed her immense wealth and hired John Smith, a lifelong friend, to run the company for her.
John Smith has no formal business training and got the job because of his friendship with DeeDee, having been an avid member of their church for the past 30 years. John has volunteered on many community and church activities especially ones where DeeDee was involved. Through this friendship, John was offered the job as CEO, in essence because DeeDee appreciated all his hard work on the volunteer activities.
Bright Designs auditors expressed concerns to DeeDee about hiring such an inexperienced CEO, but DeeDee trusted John; after all, he is a church going man and, if DeeDee could not trust John, who could she trust?
John informs you he has a problem and needs you to come out for a meeting. He suspects one of the staff has stolen some proprietary information that could severely impact Bright Designs future if this technology is made available to its competitors. John asks you to come at night so no employees will be in the building.
When you arrive at Bright Designs, you are met by John Smith in the parking lot and he escorts you to the front door. You observe that there is only one car in the lot ?a brand new Mercedes. Since you are a car enthusiast, you are aware the car is valued at $75,000. Through discussion with John Smith, he explains it was a birthday gift for his wife last week.
When you enter the building, you notice there is security system in place. In order to enter the secure area of the building, you must swipe your pass on a card reader before the security doors will open. For you to enter, John had to get a visitor pass from security. You are informed that, on the way out, you must also swipe your card. John brings you to the administrative assistant’s office and opens an unlocked door. Once inside, John lifts her computer keyboard, chuckles about the password as a pain and enters the administrative assistant’s username and password in the system to show you the transactions he is concerned about.
A review of the payroll records indicates the administrative assistant has been with the company for 10 years, rarely is sick, takes 2 weeks vacation every summer and has worked from 8 to 4 since she started with the company.
John shows you an email in the Administrative Assistant’s electronic trash bin that shows she sent an email at 6:35pm from her work computer to a pawn shop asking how much she would get for a laptop similar to the one stolen.
John also shows you another email discussing the purchase of insider information on the company for $25,000, cash sent three days later at 7:30 pm.
John asks you to investigate his administrative assistant to get sufficient evidence to fire her. He is not interested in having her charged, he just wants to get rid of the problem and avoid any possible claims of unfair dismissal.
Some additional Observations
When you do a background check on the administrative assistant, you discover she is married, has two children, lives in a modest home with a mortgage for approximately 50% of the home’s value and they have lived there for the past 10 years.
Her husband is employed and they have a good credit rating. They own one vehicle which is 5 years old and rarely leave the province for family vacations.
During your discussions with John Smith, you find out he travels extensively and just came back from 4 weeks in the South Pacific.
After some basic background checking and research on the company and key people, you drive by the company over the next few days and you notice the parking lot is nearly empty with less than ten cars in the lot. Further research on Google indicates the company has faced some difficult times in the past six months and has laid off the majority of its staff.
John has advised you that DeeDee is out of the country and does not want to be bothered with this trivial matter. She just wants it dealt with.

READ ALSO :   Art Movements