CFE Exam Quiz 36

Any information provided by any department inside the business is internal sourced information. Accounting records prepared by the accountant, HR’s employee information, supplier information, etc, are examples of internal information. Whereas, bank statement provided by the bank, an outside party, is not an example of internal source.

In criminal cases, US law makes the evidence collected illegally and doesn’t allow it to be presented in front of the court. This type of evidence falls under exclusionary rule. Whereas, in civil cases, this rule doesn’t apply to private fraud examiners. English law does not render relevant evidence inadmissible if it was illegally obtained, but it gives English courts the discretion to exclude evidence where the interests of justice so require. In Australia, a balancing test is used to check if illegally obtained evidence could be used, provided seriousness of the crime, misconduct and strength of evidence is considered by the court.

The fraud examiner must-have information on the subject in order to conduct a search for public records. The more the fraud examiner is better informed about the topic he is investigating, the easier his search will be. The following items are essential for searching public records for
information about an individual:
-The subject’s correct name
-The subject’s date of birth
-The subject’s government identification number (e.g., Social Security number, social
insurance number, National Insurance number, or national identification number)
-The subject’s last known address
The subject’s original surname if changed after marriage, any alternate given names, or
known aliases
-The identities of the subject’s close relatives and friends
-The names of the subject’s close relatives

Each agency or government unit is responsible for many different functions that may require unique information to be maintained, so public records need to be maintained. Not all government records can be accessed publicly, a person must show a certain need to access these records. They can provide valuable background information on employees, suspects and witnesses. They can also be used to corroborate or refute testimony of witnesses, to help investigators track the flow of stolen money or other assets, and to assist in the recovery of losses.

Public records differ from information available to the public. Information that is publicly available is information that has been legally published or broadcast for consumption to the public. Unlike public records, governmental organizations do not keep publicly available information.

Some investigative service providers offering a variety of public record retrieval services or, for some professionals, enlisting help from service companies, data brokers and professional online investigators could be economical. Such firms, usually using online or physical outlets, may conduct research for fraud examiner. While the price of using such companies’ services will be higher than using a provider of public records, the firms may be the best choice for those who perform searches of public records sporadically.

Non-public documents include personal and confidential information about individual or company. However, unlike public records, public does not have access to non-public documents. Fraud examiners have no absolute right to view such private documents, it may be hard or impossible to obtain access to them. And disclosure of nonpublic records is restricted by law.

Basic techniques that fraud inspectors can use to acquire bank documents: Obtain permission from the person to whom the documents belong. Obtain a summons or other legal proceedings, such as filings, interrogations and requests for documents, if the action is brought. Obtain a search warrant, although search warrants are accessible only to law enforcement authorities.

The information accessible in public records differs greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but local government organizations often keep general records. These documents are often useful for locating assets and individuals, as well as finding out who owns or is linked with a specific estate, individual, or organisation.

Building Inspector Records include name of person, address of construction, blueprints and plans showing construction details.If a company or person builds a new building or makes changes to an current building, the local construction authority should issue a construction license and record it in a file. Health or fire departments perform regular health and safety code inspections of companies or violations of fire code. These inspection documents could contain precious company data. Birth and Death records include an individual’s name, address, gender, age, , government identification number, coroner’ report, etc.

School systems maintain Public School records which include biographies of teachers, personal background, education, and former jobs. They could also include student documents. Local coroner’s register usually includes the deceased’s name or description, the date of the inquiry, etc. Voter registration records are not public in all jurisdictions, but they may contain helpful data if they are accessible. Utility records might contain the customer’s contact information, even if that number is unlisted.

Public record vendors have two distinct advantages: search speed and constant access. These databases can also uncover specific records from multiple jurisdictions in a short amount of time. However, they are not always accurate and often, just a scam.

Courts keep records of civil cases involving two or more parties, which are non-criminal legal proceedings, and many civil records are accessible for public search.
Knowing the right spelling of the name of the subject, where the individual presently lives, and where he has lived in the past is the key to finding civil court documents.

Records of the divorce court may contain useful data about bank accounts, jobs, investment revenue, and other revenue sources. Also, divorce documents may contain an asset declaration that contains bank account holding data, pension funds, artwork, coin collections, etc. In addition, the divorce records may include the place and date of marriage ; the date of filing ; the type of filing ; the locations, names, ages and date of birth of the divorced parties ; the names (and ages) of any divorced party children ; and the properties owned by the divorced parties.

Criminal courts will keep records of criminal records and convictions, but these kinds of documents should not be confused. Criminal filings are the records of criminal actions that the government files against individuals, and thus, even if the person was not found guilty of a crime, there may be criminal records for an individual. However, records of criminal convictions include only records of a final conviction for a criminal offense.

Real property records are highly essential, and property records are comparatively simple to access in many jurisdictions and contain a large quantity of data. Property records are commonly discovered at the local government level, but some counties may be able to maintain them at a centralized place. Property records can identify unknown assets or reveal property transfers to relatives, friends, or other legal entities.

Companies are created by submitting, to the government of the jurisdiction in which the entity is incorporated, some sort of organisational filing. These filings may be referred in separate jurisdictions in distinct ways, such as articles of incorporation, corporate constitution, etc. Usually include Corporate name, Ownership information, Nominal stock value, etc.

This data will allow the researcher to review a corporate structure, recognize the registered agent, and dates for trace incorporation. The documents will also often contain limited partnerships information. To check the jurisdiction in which the firm is registered as a corporation, the examiner may use these documents.

Commercial filings are records that can assist fraud reviewers in identifying personal property finance by an person or company. Banks, finance businesses and other lenders will maintain records or financial transaction filings.
To document this interest, creditors could generate a business filing, which in some jurisdictions can be openly searched.
These filings might help to identify Name of the debtor, current address of the debtor, date of filing and continuations, etc.

Here are examples of how searches are conducted in a few countries with public commercial filings:
-Australia: The Australian Financial Security Authority’s Personal Property Securities Register offers a database where safety interest information can be searched.
-Bermuda: A public “register of charges” is accessible for searching charges against assets of a Bermuda-based business or domestically established.
-Canada: Each province and territory of common law in Canada has adopted a version of the law entitled Personal Property Security Act to govern commercial filings, and commercial filings are searchable at provincial or territorial level.
-United Kingdom: Some companies are needed to register charges against their assets through the Companies House’s “Registrar of Companies.”
-USA: Commercial filings are governed by the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). UCC filings are retained by each State Secretary and are searchable at the state level.

Countries of civil law rarely have a system of public registration for commercial filings. Civil law security interests may require filings, but typically they are not public data. Commercial filings are typically private agreements between the creditor and the debtor in these nations. Usually, they are not in a centralized database when commercial filings are retained, so searching on a wide scale is not possible.

Various securities regulators have different disclosure criteria, but the following data may be included in these documents:
-Corporate financial statements
-Identification of officers and directors
-Identification of significant owners
-A description of the registrant’s properties and businesses
-A description of the important security provisions to be provided for sale and its connection with the other capital securities of the registrant
-Identification of events of interest to investors
-Identification of accountants and attorneys
-A history of the business

-Placing OR between two words returns one, most, or all search terms results.
-Placing AND between two words restore the two terms pages.
-Before a word returns pages that do not contain the expression, place the minus sign.
-Placing quotation marks around a word or word collection returns pages that contain the exact word or word set.

Advanced search operators are query terms or symbols used in search engine queries to guide search engines when running a request to perform special actions. Advanced search operators improve a query phrase’s accuracy.
They help search engines better understand what the user is looking for and faster refine a query and return relevant links.

The United States also regulates credit records, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) governs the dissemination of credit information. The FCRA places constraints on the possibility of obtaining and using a consumer credit report. The consumer must be notified in many cases or must consent to the use of the report for the purposes of employment.

Telephone records can give useful insight into fraud checks. Telephone records, for instance, could provide contacts with real estate brokers or sellers, recognize charging calls from vacation places or co-conspirators contacts, or provide other leads to investments and expenses.

Pretexting is the act of impersonating another individual or making false or misleading statements in order to acquire, sell or purchase data about a individual or organisation. Under the wide definition, non-fraudulent pretexting is not always illegal but should be used with caution.

The International Art Research Foundation (IFAR) is a non-profit organization set up in 1969 to assist avoid the circulation of forged and misattributed artworks. IFAR provides an authentication service to assist resolve disputes about the authenticity of artworks. IFAR also publishes quarterly publications on authentication studies, art law, robbery, and restoration, as well as a comprehensive list of recent stolen and missing art and antiques.

The following is a five-step approach to using the Internet in fraud examinations:
– Compile all known facts about the topic (e.g., name, age, domestic identification number, present address, previous addresses, telephone number, employer, family members, marital status, and home town).
-Conduct significant search engine searches.
-Search websites for social networking.
-Analyze data to identify leads for guidance on which items to focus on in subsequent searches.
-Investigate each lead using search engines and other online sources, separating out those that seem valuable, those that require more development, and those that should be eliminated.

Executing searches using search engines and metasearch engines is the most basic way to find information on the Internet. Search engines are software that searches for specified keywords on websites and documents and returns a list of sites and documents where keywords have been found. Metasearch engines are software that submits user requests and shows responses to several search engines. One of the common metasearch engines is Mamma that simultaneously searches for a variety of engines, directories, and web sites; correctly formats words and syntax for each one; compiles results in an online database; excludes duplicates, and shows them according to relevance in a uniform manner.