Fraud Eats Strategy

Workplace violence is the third-leading cause of death in the workplace in the United States. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 5,283 fatal workplace injuries that occurred in the United States in 2023, 740 fatalities were due to violent acts. Homicides (458) accounted for 61.9 percent of violent acts and 8.7 percent of all work-related fatalities. While it is not something anyone wants to think about or consider as a possibility in their place of work, it is a grim reality that organizational leaders must understand and prepare for. Preparation takes several forms. It includes crisis communications training and planning on how to lead when your organization is in the midst of or has just experienced a violent incident. But of perhaps even greater importance is ensuring that your workforce receives training on what to do when confronted with a workplace violence incident be it an active shooter or some other violent threat or incident. Show notes: Kate Schweit Online Resources Bureau Consortium

Brazil is a wild and wondrous country. The people are passionate, the celebrations spectacular and the history is rich. There’s a reason Brazil is Latin America’s largest economy. But investing and doing business in Brazil is fraught with rapidly changing, multi-faceted risks. Before 2014, there had been zero prosecutions under the country’s anti-bribery and corruption laws. Then the Lava Jato / Operation Car Wash investigation exploded on the scene and 280 people were convicted of having violated the Brazil Clean Companies Act. Amongst the people charged and 3 convicted in Lava Jato were former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva along with the presidents of Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay and Peru and senior executives of Brazil’s two largest state-owned companies, Petrobras and Odebrecht. It appeared that Brazil was well on its way to corruption reform. But corruption is insidious and political winds shift. Indeed, some of the recent developments in Brazil are nothing short of surreal. After several unsuccessful efforts to be allowed to run again for president despite his criminal conviction, Lula withdrew his candidacy and Jair Bolsonaro was elected president. Then in 2022, Lula was allowed to run again after the Supreme Court dismissed the 4 charges against him. Lula narrowly defeated Bolsonaro in a run off election in October 2022. Bolsonaro did the logical thing, he allegedly plotted to murder Lula. Former president Jair Bolsonaro has been charged with planning to stage a coup and poison the president. He was convicted at trial and sentenced to 27 years. And if you still think investing or expanding your operations into Brazil, you are made of tough stuff. But you may need some advice to navigate the chaotic risk environment that is Brazil.

It is fair to say that whistleblowing across Latin America has caught on. In fact, according to NAVEX’s 2025 Regional Whistleblowing & Incident Management Benchmark Report, a median of 2.97 out of each 100 employees submitted whistleblower reports last year. While that may not seem high, it is the highest region by far in NAVEX’s study when compared to the global median of 1.57 or the lowest of the four regions studied, Europe at .67. Does a higher volume of reports suggest a willingness to come forward without fear of retaliation or is it something else? The NAVEX report breaks down whistleblower allegations into risk categories. Workplace Conduct, Accounting and Financial Reporting, Business Integrity, Environment, Health and Safety, Misuse or Misappropriation of Assets and Other. In Latin America, 2/3 of all reports fell into the category of Workplace Conduct. Underneath these 6 categories, there are a total of 24 risk types including Harassment, Discrimination, Substance Abuse, Compensation and Benefits, Workplace Civility (or incivility, I suppose), Other Human Resources and Retaliation. Given that 2/3 of what’s been reported on falls within these categories, that seems like a good place to start our exploration of whistleblowing in Latin America.

So as we approach year end, many organizations are conducting performance evaluations and are allocating the bonus pool accordingly. And during the performance review process, low performers garner a lot of negative attention as you might expect. Indeed, one of the more widely recognized red flags in efforts to identify fraud risk is that of a disenfranchised employee, often a subset of the low performer pool. But what if I told you that the opposite may be true and it's high performers who pose a disproportionate amount of organizational risk?

I think for a lot of us, when we think about crypto, it still makes us cringe a little bit. And the question and the topic of today's episode is, should it still make us cringe? Whether you're a fan or you're shying away from it, the crypto ecosystem is expanding rapidly. Part of what is causing many to spurn crypto is due to reputational issues. These include the prevalence of crypto-themed fraud, and vulnerability to hacking, which make many retail investors uncomfortable and are keeping some people away. And at the same time, crypto adoption is expanding and the regulatory and enforcement environment has become more favorable to business. This confluence is opening increased opportunities for innovation, but it's also creating opportunities for a wide range of fraud schemes ranging from meme coin scans to sophisticated market manipulation. And some of the most egregious examples of crypto fraud, they continue to be addressed by law enforcement, and rightly so. But civil enforcement by victims and other private parties is equally important in addressing crypto fraud and holding crypto criminals accountable to their victims. It's also important to remember that criminal investigations primary objective is to punish those responsible, whereas making victims whole is secondary and certainly not a foregone conclusion. Civil litigation can really fill that void by seeking recovery for victims of things like pig butchering scams, crypto project, rug pulls, and institutional investment schemes such as those involving crypto startups that failed to execute.

Mexico is a critically important trading partner with the U.S. Together with China and Canada, the three account for 36.5% of all U.S. imports and 32.1% of all U.S. exports amounting to over $1 trillion of trade each year. And yet, Mexico is always a challenging country in which to do business. The gap became the wealthiest and the poorest is enormous. Violent crime and gun violence is extremely prevalent. Government and police corruption is widespread, and Mexico is amongst the largest global producers of cocaine, heroin and Fentanyl. In addition to being a narcotics source country, because it borders the U.S., it is a major narcotics transshipment country. And all of the money generated by narcotics trafficking has to be laundered. In fact, Mexican money launderers are amongst the world’s most innovative who make use of a combination of trade-based money laundering, traditional money laundering through cash intensive businesses, bulk smuggling of U.S. currency, the black market peso exchange and other proven and widely used techniques. On a more positive note, Mexico is also a huge trading and manufacturing partner for a wide range of goods including automobiles and car parts, clothing, housewares, precious metals, oil and gas and a huge volume of agricultural products. Mexico is fraught with risk, tensions between Mexico and the U.S. are at an all time high. And yet, our two economies and national security are inextricably linked. So how do U.S. companies with significant operations in Mexico continue to operate there? And what should companies who are considering investing in the Mexican market do to mitigate all of this uncertainty?

In this special crossover episode, Scott Moritz, President of White Collar Forensic LLC and host of the Fraud Eats Strategy, and Scott Maberry, host of the Nota Bene, discuss important considerations in internal investigations and how integrating each into your process can improve efficiency and lead to better and more consistent results.

In March of 2025, Former Inspector General of the Department of the Interior Mark Lee Greenblatt and I discussed the firing of the Inspectors General and its far-reaching implications for the country. With the blizzard of Executive Orders, high profile government firings and other maneuvers that appear to continue to tear down government agencies, it would be easy to forget about firing of the IGs and the long term consequences. Mark Lee Greenblatt is making it his mission so that the American people don’t lost sight of that fact. At the time of the firing of the IGs, we could only engage in conjecture as to what the long-term implications would be. On January 24, 2025, President Trump fired 16 inspectors general of the 16 largest, most complex U.S. government agencies and a 17th, the IG for USAID Paul Martin, 2 weeks later. The number has since risen to 20.

Petrobras, Braskem, Odebrecht, Stericycle and other U.S. style compliance and regulatory actions continue to be more commonplace across Latin America in the past decade. Indeed, there has been a tectonic shift in the implementation of leading industry compliance program overhauls following significant investigations and prosecutions. Some of those matters have included the use of legal tools such as monitorships and deferred prosecution agreements. While organizations on the receiving end of what is sometimes referred to in Latin America as a “leniency agreement” and/or the imposition of a compliance monitor may not welcome these measures or the costs. And yet done correctly, they can deliver long term benefits that over time may lead to improved profitability, transparency, stronger ethical culture and improved morale.

The world is a turbulent place in 2025 and doing business outside of the U.S. means needing to understand and to be able to react to a dynamic and evolving risk environment. The many countries and amazing people comprising Latin America are an important customer base and trading partner for most global organizations. Many global businesses have significant operations in the region and despite the turbulence, the region is full of opportunity. Drug cartels, transnational crime groups and gang violence, corrupt public officials, unstable governments, and professional kidnap for ransom operations are just a handful of the challenges that face global organizations operating in Latin America. To take advantage of the bountiful opportunities across the region, organizations need to be able to proactively identify, manage and mitigate these and other operational risks. It starts with knowing who you are doing business with, their reputations, prior conduct and whether their political connections are a help or a significant hindrance. Likewise, it is equally important to be able to deploy international counsel and their partners to triage crises, investigate negative events, stabilize volatile situations, understand and act upon the compliance implications and pursue avenues of recovery when losses occur.

On inauguration day, President Trump rescinded numerous Executive Orders from prior administrations including one in which appointees within each Executive Branch Agency was required to sign a pledge not to accept gifts from lobbyists, recuse themselves from matters related immediate former employers or clients for 2 years, and not to participate in any matter for which they lobbied the government as a registered lobbyist for 2 years. The pledge also required appointees upon leaving government not to communicate with their former agency or senior White House Senior Staff for 2 years, not to assist others to do so, not to lobby the U.S. government or on behalf of a foreign government or political party, not to accept a golden parachute payment coinciding with the acceptance of an appointment and to make employment decisions on their merits. The President has made a series of unorthodox appointments to head major government agencies including people who have publicly advocated for disbanding and/or radically changing those agencies and calling them “irredeemably corrupt” or other extremely derisive terminology. Also on inauguration day, the President pardoned ~1500 January 6th rioters and commuted the sentences of 14 others. Then, the DOJ mandated that the FBI turn over the names of all FBI personnel who participated in the January 6th investigations and fired or threatened to fire anyone who refused to comply. This was preceded by over a dozen firings of senior FBI and DOJ officials who played a substantive role in the January 6th investigations and prosecutions. Ultimately, the names of ~5000 FBI personnel were turned over without much assurance that their names wouldn’t be publicly released posing genuine safety concerns. But perhaps the biggest body blow to the federal law enforcement community came on January 24, 2025 when President Trump fired 16 inspectors general of the 16 largest, most complex U.S. government agencies and a 17th, the IG for USAID Paul Martin, 2 weeks later. In case that purge wasn’t enough to upend the government’s ability to police itself, Hampton Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel and David Huitema, Director of the Office of Government Ethics were also fired. And the upheaval continues unabated.

Of the various fraud scheme names that have been coined over the years, “Pig Butchering” is one that provokes the most visceral response based on the name alone. And yet, the actual act of Pig Butchering is even more horrible than the name suggests. It is the latest variation of an age-old type of crime under the umbrella of “Romance Schemes”. People who prey on the lonely and elderly pretending to be a potential romantic partner with the express purpose of defrauding them. Guest Erin West, founder of Operation Shamrock, speaks about the mission to raise awareness of pig butchering with everyone, everywhere, all the time.

A discussion on China's state-sponsored theft of intellectual property from the U.S. and other leading economies with guest Frank Figliuzzi. Frank is a national security contributor and regular columnist for NBC News and MSNBC. He was the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, where he served 25 years as a special agent and directed all espionage investigations across the government. He is the author of “The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau’s Code of Excellence”, and his most recent book "Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers."

Losses from a major financial crime can have a long term, negative impact on an organization. The odds of recovering those losses are not great. In fact, many fraudsters embark on their criminal path because of the financial wreckage that is their personal lives. Divorces, job losses, health crises and addictions often cause otherwise decent, law-abiding people to lose their minds, become desperate and commit fraud. Fraudsters who committed crimes because of crushing debt don’t usually represent an attractive option when it comes time to seek financial recovery. Third parties sometimes do. The most reliable avenue for financial recovery may be your insurance carrier. Fraud losses incurred because of employee dishonesty are probably covered under your commercial crime or fidelity policy. If the bad actors in your company are board members or officers, the losses may be covered by your Directors & Officers (D&O) liability policy. Other policies that could come into play depending upon the facts include your general liability, property and casualty, professional liability and cyber policies.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”. Certainly, this quote, who depending on who you ask is attributable to Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln or Confucius, is a great way to encapsulate the importance of crisis communications. We have all seen examples of how things can go from bad to worse when someone steps to the podium during a crisis that is unfolding and makes public pronouncements without first gathering the facts. Mishandling crisis communications can shift the focus away from the crisis at hand and make the company’s handling of the crisis the bigger story. Crisis communications is a critically important tool in the company’s arsenal during a high-profile investigation.

In this episode, we talk about remote witness interviews and how to make the best of a bad situation using time-tested interrogation techniques and other methods. While things are starting to return to something resembling normal, our use of video conferencing as a business tool is here to stay. I’ve been fielding a lot of questions about use of body language and other techniques to try to limit a witness or deponent’s ability to be coached or misdirect the interviewer. With us today is a subject matter expert on interviewing and interrogation skills, Michael Bret Hood. Bret is the Founding Partner of 21st Century Learning & Consulting, LLC where he teaches leadership skills. He is also an adjunct professor of Corporate Governance and Ethics at University of Virginia. For more information visit: https://whitecollarforensic.com

Some human beings are wonderful. Some are middle of the road and some are truly terrible. Terrible human beings are frequently indistinguishable from wonderful ones. How can we tell them apart? In the context of business relationships, the tip of the compliance spear in attempting to separate the good from the bad is frequently open source intelligence investigations. Sometimes referred to as investigative due diligence or background investigations, this investigative tool can be a game changer when it comes to counterparty risk. Since leaving the FBI in 1996, I have overseen tens of thousands of such investigations and have designed and implemented programs to risk rank counterparties and perform investigative due diligence of customers, borrowers, investment targets, vendors and intermediaries commensurate with their potential risk.

In this episode we going explore “bullet-proofing” your FCPA acquisition due diligence, merger integration and the government’s recent revisions to the FCPA Resource Guide and Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs guidance. Gone are the days when the potential bribery and corruption risk of an acquisition can afford to be something assessed at the 11th hour or not at all. Successor liability stemming from undiscovered bribery activity can give rise to devastating financial consequences. Joining me today is Skadden Arps partner and FCPA luminary Gary DiBianco. Gary’s practice focuses on advising senior management and boards of directors faced with complex government or internal investigations. For more information visit: https://whitecollarforensic.com

Successor liability under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been a risk for companies since the statute was first enacted. But until recently, the DOJ and SEC have been deliberately vague in terms of the guidance offered and their expectations about FCPA due diligence and the time imperatives surrounding post-merger integration as it relates to combining compliance programs. That all changed in October of 2023 when Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco announced the implementation of DOJ’s Safe Harbor Policy for voluntary self-disclosures made in connection with Mergers and Acquisitions. Put succinctly, DAG Monaco said “we want to incentivize the acquiring company to timely disclose misconduct uncovered during the M&A process.” She further announced: “Going forward, acquiring companies that promptly and voluntarily disclose criminal misconduct within the Safe Harbor period, and that cooperate with the ensuing investigation, and engage in requisite, timely and appropriate remediation, restitution, and disgorgement – they will receive the presumption of a declination. Of particular note is that in order to qualify for the Safe Harbor, companies must disclose misconduct discovered at the acquired entity within six months from the date of closing. That applies whether the misconduct was discovered pre- or post-acquisition.

In this episode, we delve into the psychology of white-collar criminals. White-criminal criminals are often treated differently than other categories of criminals which provokes a response unlike other crimes. White-collar criminals are not better than or more deserving of leniency than other categories of criminal, it’s just that they are wired differently and understanding that fact can better position us to help safeguard organizations from the types of crimes that white-collar criminals commit. Joining Scott on today's episode are two experts on the subject of white-collar crime psychology, Nicolas Bourtin and Eugene Soltes. For more information visit: https://whitecollarforensic.com