McKenna At Georgia Southern Fraud and Forensic Accounting Conference

I spoke for the third year in a row at the Georgia Southern Fraud and Forensic Accounting Conference held again in Savannah. My topic was, “Auditors as ‘Whistleblowers’: The Auditors’ Responsibility to Report Fraud and Illegal Acts.”

This presentation extended the discussion I started in my recent post on Section 10A of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934.

For previous years’ presentations on “The Skeptical Professional,” go here and here.

There were some great presentations, including:

Brian Grow from Reuters presented their multi-part series “Shell Games”.  This series and the journalists who worked on it were recently named as finalists for the 2012 UCLA Gerald Loeb Awards for Business Journalism.  Articles in this series explore the extent and impact of corporate secrecy in the United States, in particular the use and abuse of shell corporations. The last article about Chesapeake’s Aubrey McClendon in December led to a much broader investigation of Chesapeake Energy and McClendon. I was quoted in the first in that series just recently.

I was thrilled to hear Marjorie Maguire-Krupp talk about Satyam in her very thorough discussion, “Riding a Tiger and Not Knowing How to Get Off”: Lessons Learned from the Satyam Fraud.” The presentation was co-written by Sridhar Ramamoorti, an old friend from Chicago and The IIA who is now teaching at Kennesaw State University.

Joe Koletar, a retired FBI guy keynoted about the psychology of fraud.  I took a lot of notes.

Pat Huddleston is CEO of a firm called Investor Watchdog LLC and he gave a talk with lots of references to resources for investing due diligence.