Episode 63: Risk-Based Analysis in the Data Sleuth® Process with Rachel Organist, CPE
Any investigative process carries the inherent risk that you’ll spend limited resources chasing the wrong information. Leah and Rachel discuss how risk-based analysis helps the Data Sleuth® investigator navigate this risk by narrowing focus and aligning efforts with investigation priorities. They also touch on some practical tools you can start using in your current casework.
The information in today's podcast is just a glimpse of what's inside Leah's new book—Data Sleuth: Using Data in Forensic Accounting Engagements and Fraud Investigations—coming April 19, 2022. Preorder now on Amazon!
Rachel Organist is the Data Analytics Manager at Workman Forensics. Originally trained as a geologist, Rachel uses her unique scientific reasoning expertise and analytical aptitude to undertake financial investigations. Read her full bio on the Workman Forensics team page.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Download & learn how to use the Fraud Detection Worksheet mentioned in this episode in our blog post—Fraud Detection Made Simple.
Preorder Leah's new book Data Sleuth on Amazon—coming April 19, 2022.
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Transcript
Leah Wietholter:
This episode is part one of our four part series leading up to the launch of my new book.
Intro:
Welcome to The Investigation Game Podcast brought to you by Workman Forensics.
Leah Wietholter:
Welcome to the Investigation Game Podcast. I'm your host, Leah Weitholter, CEO and Founder, of Workman Forensics in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Today I have with me, one of the team members again, I have Rachel Organist, she's our senior data analyst. Originally trained as a geologist, Rachel obtained a bachelor of science from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a master of science from Penn State University.
Leah Wietholter:
When her work in the oil and gas industry, didn't provide the career satisfaction. She was looking for she researched other fields and found forensic accounting to be the perfect place to apply her analytical skills. In her work with Workman Forensics, Rachel uses her expertise in scientific reasoning, as well as her aptitude for identifying, collecting, and synthesizing data to undertake financial investigations. As of 2021, Rachel is an official Certified Fraud Examiner. So thanks so much for joining me today Rachel.
Rachel Organist:
I'm so excited to be here.
Leah Wietholter:
Yes. And talk with me about risk based analysis, at least as part of the Data Sleuth Process. I did want to add that clarification. So really excited about this. And I think we should just jump in. Are you ready?
Rachel Organist:
Sounds good.
Leah Wietholter:
Okay. So what is the purpose of a risk based analysis in a fraud investigation or forensic accounting engagement and specifically as it relates to our Data Sleuth Process?
Rachel Organist:
One of the biggest benefits in doing risk based analysis is that you're going to prioritize your resources because even our, our big budget clients, they don't want to be just spending money on us going down rabbit trails as we sometimes call them or getting really in the weeds. So risk based analysis is going to help you prioritize your resources to the highest risk areas. And then along those same lines, it helps with not getting on that path of diminishing returns as you really try to quantify every dollar of the loss, because especially with most of our clients, their goals and what the final outcome is going to be. If you're going to get some kind of restitution, the subject is probably not going to be able to pay that all back anyway. So if we just focus on the meat and potatoes of that particular case where we think the highest risk of fraud is, that's probably the best use of our time and the client's money.
Leah Wietholter:
So we'll get a little bit more into like the practical application of this, but in a risk based analysis. And now that you're a CFE, so congratulations. That happened-
Rachel Organist:
Thank you.
Leah Wietholter:
...Last year, right? End of 2021.
Rachel Organist:
Yep.
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah. So now that you're a CFE, you've probably seen the charts like I have that maybe provide like a fraud risk assessment for an entire organization, but a risk based analysis in the way that we use it as part of Data Sleuth Process is really more of a... like you said, a prioritization, but it's the prioritization of the risk of fraud in the case that we're looking at. So like the biggest bang for somebody's buck, essentially.
Rachel Organist:
Yeah. Kind of a narrower view overall. And the other thing I was just thinking about too, is that when we say risk based analysis, sometimes we can mean one of two different things. One is this case planning, a big case picture, version of risk analysis that we're talking about. And then another way that I think of it is looking at it on an almost an individual transaction basis, which transactions are highest risk once you're really in the weeds of the analysis. And so I know we're going to talk about that in a subsequent episode, but that's another way that we focus on risk when we're working with clients.
Leah Wietholter:
So when we say risk, what are we talking about?
Rachel Organist:
So basically, and I think we'll probably get more into what exactly this looks like in our cases and in fraud later in the episode, but I think of opportunity as maybe a key component of risk, where did the subject have... because typically there's a subject that we're looking at, where would they have had opportunities to divert funds? Essentially, that's it, divert funds, whether they were coming into your entity or going out, risk is getting to correlate with opportunity, I guess I'd say.
Leah Wietholter:
So in larger organizations, formalize enterprise risk management, right? So they're identifying all of these vulnerabilities to something that would be negatively impacting for the company. So that could be more in the soft skills area, like maybe publicity or social media or their position on something and how the public's going to be that. But then it could also be where could someone steal from them or misrepresent, I'm thinking of Enron, but misrepresent how they're handling their numbers, that would ultimately cause the whole thing to come crashing down.
Leah Wietholter:
So there's like, and I'm kind of overwhelmed to be honest with enterprise risk management. So whenever we're talking about risk, in this context, it's nothing that big. We're not covering all risk within an organization. It's really what you said, where are the opportunities that someone could divert funds for their own personal benefits?
Rachel Organist:
And it sounds so simple when you put it like that. I mean, that's really all we're looking for. There's a lot that can look like. And a lot that goes into that, but I think that's definitely a little bit more or easier to digest way to sum up what we do.
Leah Wietholter:
Right. I even struggled with, when I was writing the book, like how do I define this and make it simple? Because a risk based analysis is what we are doing, to put it into a professional term. But to me it's also like, yeah but we're just looking for ways that people can steal money. I mean at the end of the day, because that is where our focus is zoomed in. Now you can have a risk based approach to any of these other things we talked about. And that's what these enterprise risk management groups do, is to evaluate those things and how do you mitigate it? And what's the priority, but also in any type of risk management you're looking at like, what's the likelihood, so what are those opportunities? And then how do we prioritize the resources we have to mitigate or reduce the risk within these areas?
Leah Wietholter:
And for us it's how do we take a client's resources? Whatever problems we're solving for a client, how do we take the resources that are available for solving those problems and prioritize them, so that they're getting, like I said earlier, the biggest bang for their buck. And let's talk just a little bit more about the diminishing returns aspect of this, because a client has all the feelings when they come talk to us, right?
Leah Wietholter:
And then as part of our case planning process, we try to create some priority and that's where this risk based analysis comes into play, is to prioritize what is going to... I feel like this might sound a little bit, we can bounce this idea around, just on the spot here, but we need to prioritize what are the areas that are going to quantify the largest loss for the client first?
Rachel Organist:
Oh yeah, absolutely. And I was just thinking there's, what's that saying? There's some saying about like how 80% or 20% of the... I feel like it applies to different like management type things, whether it's people or how you spend your time, what your tasks, but "20% of the tasks provide 80% of the impact" or 20% of the people, whatever. I definitely think, I mean, obviously those are just random numbers, but that concept applies here too. Often looking at, if we can focus on 20% of all the ways that money goes into or out of a business and probably like 80% a loss, is there. Is that making sense?
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah, I think it makes sense too, because the opportunity is in the path of least resistance for the subject. So if I can steal money by just overpaying myself through payroll, versus my payables process has four people involved, but overpaying myself in payroll, there's nobody stopping. I have the ability to in inflate my hours or put extra expense reimbursements or something like that, and no one reviews it. And so between me hitting send, funding it and then it landing in my bank account, then that would make sense that even though that's only one component. The majority of the loss is likely there, if not all of it.
Rachel Organist:
Just makes me think it's so common. And we talk about this in some of our trainings around, turning case drama into a case plan and just what clients tend to focus on when they talk to you. It's like everyone wants there to be a conspiracy or a really elaborate scheme. Those two things just really capture people's imaginations for some reason. But in reality, that's probably not your highest risk area, if you're the average small business. There's probably some process you have that has a complete lack of internal controls or was just down to this one person that actually is going to be higher risk.
Rachel Organist:
And I think also to your point about, we're trying to capture most of the loss putting the least resources into it. We haven't really talked about this a lot, but I think the dollar amounts that you're looking at in different areas or different fraud risks, it's almost like a multiplier. You want to look at where were the opportunities for money to be diverted but also how much money are we talking about?
Rachel Organist:
If you're looking at a business and you can see, okay, well, there was an opportunity for them to... This person had check writing ability out of the business, but they also had a company credit card that they used, but there's only a $1,000 a month being put on this credit card. Whereas maybe the check going out of the business are $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000. I feel like that can be another component of what risk assessment is, and sometimes too, it doesn't always align with the client's sense of what's important or what really...
Rachel Organist:
A lot of times there's a certain aspect of the case that just really bothers the client. They feel super personally wronged by it or for whatever reason, they just really want to tell us about that over and over again. So like in this example, maybe it's the credit card, but sometimes we just have to tell them, "If you want to get the most bang for your buck, we can look at this for you, but that's probably not. And it's not that the opportunity wasn't there, but it's not the highest risk in terms of overall dollar amount."
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah. I'll give a shout out to a previous guest, Gary Glanz that we had on the show, anytime I would work a case with Gary and he was talking to the client, he would always say, "You don't want to take good money and throw it after bad." I feel like that's another way of talking about a risk based analysis in providing forensic accounting and fraud investigation engagements is that diminishing return comes with, okay, let's go capture the majority of the loss. And then at a certain point for every dollar you're finding you might be spending a hundred, I mean...
Rachel Organist:
Yeah. Not worth it.
Leah Wietholter:
It's not worth it at all. And then just kind of a practicality type thing. If you end up in civil court or even referring the case to law enforcement, law enforcement might decide that all of these like smaller items aren't worth the complexity of explaining it to make it stick. So the easy part are these large expense reimbursements or that are clear that somebody stole money as opposed to all of these individual misuse of the credit card, but it could have gone either way and all of that. So, that's part of that diminishing returns.
Rachel Organist:
Oh yeah. That's another good aspect. How definitive is it? Or how well can you make your case that was actually fraud, is probably a component of whether you want to put a lot of resources there.
Leah Wietholter:
And then thinking about how much... Because we deal in evidence unless we get a con confession. So how much circumstantial evidence do we have supporting portions of this loss versus other portions of the loss? How good is that evidence? How strong is that evidence? That it clearly didn't benefit the business and it benefited this individual or clearly this person was hiding it.
Leah Wietholter:
I think about this will lend to our episode about a type of data analysis that we do but from an evidentiary standpoint, how many things do we have that just keep indicating this clearly did not benefit the company and this was hidden. All of these pieces of intent and things like that, that can like add up to say, okay, yeah this is probably our best category of loss to really go after.
Rachel Organist:
And that makes me think of another point that I'd make, which is that sometimes it doesn't... The areas that actually are highest risk for the business are not going to line with the areas where their money is best spent in a fraud investigation because unfortunately the reason it's so high risk is because their record keeping was severely lacking or their controls, all that goes together. We've definitely had cases where yes, we identified this area as being of particularly high risk for them. But unfortunately we weren't actually able to quantify anything because...
Rachel Organist:
And they could have had us spend time on it really as much as they wanted to spend, but it doesn't mean if there's not documentation for that part of the loss, it's probably not a good use of their resources. And that, I feel like those are so unsatisfying for us and for the client and you just feel bad, but really the best thing we can do is say, "Hey, we can work with your team to give you some suggestions for the future, how you can minimize this risk, but there's kind of nothing that can be done if it's already happened."
Leah Wietholter:
It's a little bit of a tangent I'll admit, when I'm going to say next. But something I realized I was giving a presentation for the ACFE last week or a couple weeks ago, and I realized as I was talking that, because you mentioned how clients like to think that there's a conspiracy or collusion or something really complicated. And as I was talking, I heard myself say that typically, because if you think of path of least resistance, so if a business does not have internal controls or very good internal controls or whatever, that's creating this opportunity, where someone can just directly, I'm oversimplifying this, but write checks from themselves to their personal bank account, they could use a different a scheme or whatever fine, but that's ultimately at the end of the day, how do I get money out of this company through the path of least resistance that will increase my purchasing power on the other side.
Leah Wietholter:
So, that's how that works. But in a company that has internal control roles, that's when conspiracy and collusion are actually most common because in order for someone to steal that money, to relieve a pressure, incentive or get money out of the company, you would have to get people on your team to then make that happen. And that's just been my experience. I would love to hear from listeners, if they've seen opposite.
Leah Wietholter:
But if running my scheme does not require anyone else to be involved, I have likely not brought anyone else in because that means, since we're talking about risk, the risk to the subject is that they're going to be found out more quickly, and the whole point is to hide it, so that you can keep stealing or so that you don't get in trouble or whatever. I just thought that was, I don't know, just one of those moments that I just hear myself talking about this, and I kind of freaked out for a second because I thought "I haven't thought through this," but once I got through it more, I do think it holds up.
Rachel Organist:
You're not going to bring in a co-conspirator unless you need to get around an internal control.
Leah Wietholter:
Exactly. Exactly. All right. Within a risk based analysis, what are the practical steps or evaluation process in performing this? And specifically, let's start with like at the beginning of an investigation, maybe even pre-case planning, like just when we're talking to the client, what does that look like?
Rachel Organist:
Yeah. So I was going to say, I think a lot of this happens kind of in those first conversations with the client, definitely just understanding their processes and the records that they have, and the information that's available, and the controls that were in place. But at the same time, I think the less the client can tell us about what happened, the more important this risk based analysis is for them. Sometimes clients come to us and they kind of already think they see how the scheme worked.
Rachel Organist:
And we always want to cast a wider net, just make sure we catch everything, but that can give us a starting point. But I feel like it's those times when the client is like, "I don't know what's happening here, but something isn't right. At the end of the day, my bank balance just seems like it's not what it should be."
Rachel Organist:
Then I feel like this is most helpful, but yeah, I'd say the first step is usually just to really get a handle on what their processes are. And again, how money came into the business or entity, nonprofit, whatever we're looking at, and then how money went out, because those are really... I think we had a social media post the other day, or maybe it hasn't gone out yet, but it was just a Leah Weitholder quote of, "Money can be stolen coming into your business or go out." But that's it, I mean, those are the two options, which I think is really, I think people often don't think to simplify it to that extent, but it's true.
Leah Wietholter:
It's true. I mean, it's only the sources and the uses for sure. And I think that whenever I'm meeting with clients, I use, or this risk based to for two things, if like you said, if somebody comes in and they have no idea, they're just like "Cash is wrong. I should have more money than I have." Then I walk through a risk based analysis essentially just by asking them some questions. But then when someone comes in and says, "I know that they're seal through payroll, I know that they're stealing through whatever." I use risk based analysis to think, to preliminarily validate just through logic and reasoning, their claims.
Leah Wietholter:
So if they come in and they said, "I know someone is stealing through payroll," and then I start asking those questions related to the subject's access. And then I find out that there's all these people involved, then I'm going to start asking more questions and then say, "Okay, but what other responsibilities do they have?" So it's doing like this. I'm really lacking the word for it, but this preliminary evaluation of the legitimacy of the client's claims.
Rachel Organist:
Or their hypothesis, because it's not always like they're not legitimate, but they could just be missing a more obvious way to steal.
Leah Wietholter:
Right. And tell me how you know this? And let's see what evidence have you collected. And then they start telling me all of these confusing things. So then I ask about, "Okay, well what else did they have access to?" And then I'll say "Actually I think this is your area of highest risk. And maybe we start there." Like you're right, they very well could be stealing money, but maybe not in the way you think or whatever. So, to test their hypothesis while we're talking. But then also for those that have no idea where it's started, like giving them a starting point. And then what would that look like throughout the investigation? A risk based analysis.
Rachel Organist:
We set up our case plan at the beginning, and we use obviously risk based analysis to inform that. But it's definitely an iterative process. As much as we like to, I know I really love to pretend that there is some ideal way to create the most amazing case plan, that it won't have to change. I don't think that's reality.
Leah Wietholter:
It is an investigation, it's an exploratory process, so.
Rachel Organist:
Right. That's a perfect word. It's an exploratory process. So by definition we don't know everything at the beginning or we wouldn't be doing it. So to me, it's kind of, you're applying that risk based lens at every step as either we uncover more information or often the client, depending on the type of client, but there's definitely, I feel like just small business owners, especially because there's so invested in whatever it is, but they'll come to us.
Rachel Organist:
I'm thinking of someone in particular and I know you know who it is, but they're kind of doing their own parallel investigation with ours, and it can honestly be really helpful, and they're not maybe using the same approaches in whatever that we would, or they wouldn't be paying us, but they're digging through emails or they're following up on kind of these other threads, a lot of unstructured data, I find.
Rachel Organist:
We don't tend to use as much, but that's often what they are looking at to be like, "Ah, here's this note that I found." And so they're bringing that stuff to us throughout the process too. And I think looking at it through that lens of risk can help us assess that additional information as it comes in and say, "Oh, this does relate to a process that I think is an of risk for you," versus I get why this is really bothering you, but I don't think you should have us spend more time on that.
Leah Wietholter:
And then to help them think about, okay, "We understand that you found this note, but within the data, we don't have a good way of extracting that. And this would be a really manual process. And so since we've already quantified 3.5 million, you're probably not going to at any of that back. So we can go down this other rabbit trail, but that's when you're spending good money going after bad."
Rachel Organist:
Yes, definitely.
Leah Wietholter:
Hi everyone. It's Leah, my new book Data Sleuth: Using Data in Forensic Accounting Engagements and Fraud Investigations launches April 19th. And to celebrate, we are giving away 10 signed copies during each of our April 5th and April 19th episodes. With 20 chances to win, you do not want to miss out. To be sure you're in the drawing, subscribe to the podcast and turn on alerts to be the first to know when the episodes drop. Practically like these steps, the how to, how do we evaluate this risk when we're starting a financial investigation?
Rachel Organist:
So I don't know if we want to plug some of our worksheets and book elements yet, or if we're going to do that later, but we do-
Leah Wietholter:
Oh no, go ahead.
Rachel Organist:
We do have a, I'm going to totally blank on the name of the worksheet, which is why I'm terrible at this. But we have a fraud risk detection worksheet that helps people walk through these kind of things. The types of things we're going to evaluate are well, we split our mindset into money coming in and money going out. So as you have money coming into your business, what are the ways it comes into your business? Do you have people paying you in cash? Do you have people writing you checks? Those kinds of things. Who touches the money as it comes in? What's the process? Who makes deposits to the bank, if there are cash or checks. Who is responsible for things like customer invoicing and then tracking those payments? And on the cash outside, who can write checks out of your business? Who controls your payroll system? If you have payroll.
Rachel Organist:
So looking at all the different little avenues that money comes into and goes out of your organization, and then who touches those things, I think are the most important starting points. And then if we find that there are places where there either aren't inherent controls in it, like cash is something that just like doesn't have a lot. Unless you're very intentional about it, I think it's hard to have a lot of control over that. And then looking at just the personnel involved, if it's like only one person involved in a step, obviously that's problematic, but that's where we usually start.
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah. So we have a blog post where we have this download, that's the fraud detection worksheet. And-
Rachel Organist:
That's what it is.
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah. You're good. While you were talking, I got to look it up. So there's a blog post where we talk about how to use this spreadsheet and it's available on our website, and we'll make sure we put that in the show notes, if you want to download that. But yeah, identifying where does many come from, and at each of those sources of funds, so it could be sales, it could come from maybe sublease space. It could come from manufacturing, scrap income. And how are all of these sources of income paid? What are the types of payments you receive and then who touches it? Which you mentioned. And where? So my technician might connect with the payment on site at somebody's house, like a plumber, but then maybe the office manager reconciles these credit card payments or something.
Leah Wietholter:
So identifying each of those individuals, and where they interact or touch the payment. And then, if this is a business owner doing this, then ask yourself if the person wants to steal funds, where would it have happened? And then if the funds were stolen, how would you know? But I think as the investigators, like us, those are the two things that we have to answer ourselves as we're learning this information from the client. I know that's what I do in initial client meetings. I'm thinking, okay, so they've told me, this is how this process works. So in each of these processes, could money have been stolen here, here, or here? And then I'll run it by them.
Leah Wietholter:
This is just part of a conversation. This isn't like a, I don't know, quiz or anything. It's just part of the conversation, trying to fill in these blanks because those areas where it could happen, is a risk, but then at the same time and connecting it to the data piece, I think is when we, as a team or even sitting in that meeting with the client, start thinking, okay, what data sources exist that would confirm or deny that funds were stolen? And that's that data piece.
Rachel Organist:
Right. That how would you know, I was just thinking like, and that's where we get into case planning.
Leah Wietholter:
That's right. Exactly. So, and then we perform these same steps for as money leaves, the business. I mean, it's exactly the same process. And I think most of the time, see if you agree, based on the cases you've worked, I think most of the time, more of the risks exist on the money outside.
Rachel Organist:
I agree. Because when I stop to think of examples of diversion of money coming in, like I just struggled to think of them. I think it's so much easier for people to write themselves a check or overpay payroll or use a company credit card inappropriately. I don't know. I think usually there are fewer controls around that, it seems like. And so it just requires less complexity on the part of the subject to do that.
Leah Wietholter:
So before we wrap up, I wondered if you had a case story that you remember from something you worked here, that represents this risk based analysis, especially you prior to case planning, if not throughout.
Rachel Organist:
Yeah. So I'm thinking of a case that was pretty interesting and actually ended up being pretty complicated with the data that they had available, but it was a service company of sorts and they had this inspection branch or I forget what exactly they called it, but they had this one department that was overseen by this one guy and it was interesting because the way they ran that department had actually evolved over time. Maybe with the ownership, I think sometimes people can get away with this more when it is gradual or changes to a process are made over time.
Rachel Organist:
It had essentially become a lot less controlled or a lot more of the operations. And specifically the payroll of the department had under the control of this one employee or manager and his right hand person, who he had hired and brought in. I think he had worked with her at a previous employer and they also had several service techs or other people in the group. He had started to bring in all of his own people, which is another thing. We don't talk about that often, but I think that in and of itself is a source of risk or a potential red flag. When you know the subject has a lot of these preexisting relationships or relationships that exist outside of your business. That's just kind of another side note related to this case.
Rachel Organist:
But basically the payroll for that group had previously been handled by some payroll clerk or he had brought it in house, within his department and now had this right hand lady doing payroll. And so all of the time sheets... People would fill out their time sheets and then they converted them to the spreadsheet. But she controlled that and then she also cut the checks. So that was a big red flag for us that, and to the client as well, to their credit, they were like, we think that overpayment of payroll is what's happening here, but we had a lot of discussions with them. I just remember about what that process looked like, and what data sources we were going to compare and the risk factors there.
Rachel Organist:
And then the other interesting element of that one was obviously we're always looking for where money went, but then also what was the benefit if the money didn't obviously just go directly to the subject. So in this case, if they were overpaying a bunch of these texts or whatever, how did that benefit the subject? And so another aspect that he would've been responsible for in this department was the client invoicing and taking in those client payments.
Rachel Organist:
And so, one thing that we had considered was these apparent overpayments where people are working, but there's no client payments or customer payments associated with those hours worked, was he also invoicing outside of the system because there weren't really any audits or checks being done of that. And he had control over that process too. So that one had to two big areas where this guy, I think had the potential to be controlling the flow of money basically. And it wasn't really being reviewed or reconciled or no one else was really taking a second look at it.
Leah Wietholter:
Right. And that last risk area you talked about was that he would be potentially charging our client for payroll, for technicians. So he was either just straight up over paying them and maybe getting some sort of kickback from the employees themselves, which was a risk, or these technicians really were working on jobs, but then he was invoicing from his own system, and collecting those client payments. So he was getting 100% of the revenue and then charging the cost, the associated payroll cost to our client.
Rachel Organist:
Right. I think this one's just interesting because we are saying how it seems like money out schemes are just generally the most common that we see in the area of greatest risk, but this is in a way kind of both, or you could look at it through or lens. Was he overpaying people or was he paying people for work that they did, but then diverting the income or truly the income was never even coming into the business or related to the business at all.
Leah Wietholter:
Right. There was no record of these people working.
Rachel Organist:
Right. Of those jobs existing right or whatever.
Leah Wietholter:
So it was really, really fascinating. Yeah. The data on that one is the most frustrating thing, and we won't get into that on this episode. Rachel, thank you so much for joining me today and talking about risk based analysis. I've really enjoyed it. I think that this helps me explain it better, just having this conversation with you. And so we'll make sure in the show notes to link to the book, of course our new Data Sleuth book that's available for pre-order on Amazon. And then also we'll make sure to link to the blog post where people can download that Fraud Detection Worksheet. So thank you so much again.
Rachel Organist:
Yeah. So glad to be here.
Leah Wietholter:
Hey everyone, it's Leah. I want to tell you about a project I've been working on that I'm really excited about. Coming in April, 2022. The Data Sleuth Process that we use every day when working investigations at Workman Forensics is being made available in my book, Data Sleuth: Using Data in Forensic Accounting Engagements and Fraud Investigations. In it, I share stories from my journey, including building Workman Forensics as well as case stories. But most of all, I lay out the Data Sleuth Process. It's all in the book. From client inquiries, case planning, standard data driven, data sleuth analysis, to the final report and testifying.
Leah Wietholter:
When I started Workman forensics in 2010, I looked everywhere for a reliable process for financial investigations, but I came up short, so I decided to build one. The Data Sleuth Process came out of my dream to find a work life balance without diminishing quality work product, and made forensic accounting available to more people. After 11 years in the making, I want to share it with you. If you are just starting out, this will give you what I wished I had had back then, a place to start. If you have been doing this for a while and struggle with seasons of burnout, the tools in this book will give you hope. It is possible to have a data driven approach to financial investigations in a team environment pre-orders are available. Now check the show notes for details.
Outro:
Thank you for listening to The Investigation Game. For more information on any of the topics brought up on this show, visit workmanforensics.com. If you enjoyed our show, be sure to subscribe and leave a review. You can also connect with us on any social media platform by searching Workman Forensics. If you have any questions or topic ideas, please email us at podcast@workmanforensics.com. Thank you.