Episode 64: Case Planning: The Key to the Data Sleuth® Process
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
Intro:
This episode is part two of our four-part series leading up to the launch of my new book. The Data Sleuth process I lay out in the book is what I wish I had had when I started working with forensics in 2010. Whether you're new to the industry, wondering where to start, or maybe even wrestling with how to scale a service that seems unscalable, I will leave the information in this book can help. The book is available now for pre-order. Pre-orders are what publishers use to determine how many books to order, so if you enjoy the content in today's episode, would you consider pre-ordering the book today? Stay tuned at the end of the show for more detail on the Data Sleuth book, or see the show notes to reserve your copy today.
Leah Wietholter:
Welcome to The Investigation Game Podcast. I'm your host, Leah Wietholter, 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. 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 the synthesizing data to undertake financial investigations. As of 2021, Rachel is an official certified fraud examiner. Thanks so much for joining me today. Rachel.
Rachel Organist:
I am so excited to be here.
Leah Wietholter:
I know you are because we going to talk about one of your favorite things. I think you have several favorite things, though.
Rachel Organist:
I do, but this is definitely one of them.
Leah Wietholter:
I would say this is one of my favorite things, but not for the same reason. Our topic today is case planning and the title is Case Planning is the Key to the Data Sleuth Process. For me, from my perspective, case planning is what saved my life and made sure that I didn't burn out and quit this career like six years ago, or five years ago. Case planning made it where we could all communicate on projects and divide up the projects and all that and so we'll talk about all those details, but for me, this is what kept Workman Forensics in business, so that's why I love case planning.
Rachel Organist:
I just love it because it's fun.
Leah Wietholter:
Right. Okay, that's great. We're not going to talk about it from an owner's perspective today. Let's talk about it for just our general audience. Why is case planning important for investigators?
Rachel Organist:
First of all, just a side thought that I just had about case planning and why I feel like some people might love it and some people might find this to be kind of the less exciting part of the investigation process. It's not like when you're really digging in and doing the analysis and doing the research and uncovering fun stuff, I feel like a lot of people love that part. It's almost like some people hate to read the instructions before they assemble a piece of Ikea furniture or whatever. I'm a huge instructions reader, so I love to just get that big picture out of the way upfront and see where I'm going to end up. I think if you enjoy that, you, too will fall in love with case planning. But even if you don't, just take it from us that it is super essential. I mean, we'll go through the reasons that it is the key to the Data Sleuth process.
Rachel Organist:
But I would say the main reasons that it's so important for investigators is it's what's going to keep you focused on that end goal and not getting lost in the weeds. I kind of sound like a broken record here, but that's just because that's, I feel like, a really high risk, especially for a lot of investigators who, we probably tend to be really curious people by nature, and so it's easy to follow your own curiosity and just keep doing the parts of the investigation that are really fun. But with a case plan, you're going to stay focused on that end goal. What does the client actually need from you? What's going to add value for them and not go down those rabbit trails?
Rachel Organist:
It definitely helps you keep asking yourself, "Why am I doing this task?" for every task that you do, so that's going to keep costs down for clients while getting them all the answers that they want if those answers are possible to get, within reason. It kind of ensures that the analysis that you're doing is going to help meet your client's goals. Often, that's going to be quantifying a loss and identifying benefit to the subject because those are going to be components of a fraud, but it could be a little different depending on the case you're looking at. But having a case plan is going to help you keep each analysis that you're doing aligned with whatever those goals are.
Rachel Organist:
One of the things that I love, I think, is just really saves a lot of time and money and heartache down the road is a good case plan can help you anticipate data availability issues and analysis issues that are going to come up later. I mean, there are always going to be surprises or wrenches that get thrown into things, but if you really put the effort to see what data you have and kind of think through what you want to do with it at the outset, that just is much easier. You don't want to end up telling the client you can do something and then you find out that the data they have available is not... Sometimes you can get really creative and answer their question with bad data, but sometimes it just might not be possible, so a good case plan, I think, is going to help you identify those issues as early in the process as possible, which is just good for everyone.
Rachel Organist:
That also keeps the case moving. I feel like we've honestly always had a good case-planning process since I got here three years ago, you guys were kind of already doing it, but I do feel like we've gotten better and better at this. I just think I've heard Leah and Megan say that earlier we would have more of an issue with everyone's working along and then, oh, shoot, I open up this spreadsheet that I was going to join to this other spreadsheet, and it doesn't actually have what I need, or we're missing three random months of bank statements in a really important time period, or whatever, and so a case plan is going to help you get those issues addressed earlier, so work doesn't have to grind into a halt. It just is a lot more time-efficient, and especially as our caseload has grown, if you're juggling multiple cases, it's essential to know that you have what you need upfront and not run into that stuff last minute.
Rachel Organist:
Then finally, if this isn't enough of a sales pitch, I think a huge benefit of a good case plan is that it's a tool for making sure that as an investigator, you are on the same page as the client and/or their attorney. I always think of, we had a pretty unique case involving a school district, and for that one, when we planned it felt like a little outside, our wheelhouse. I later in the case came to feel like, "No, this is a perfect case for us," but it wasn't like immediately obvious why it was. But our initial plan, we sent back to them and we were like, "Hey, here's what we're going to do for you," and the attorney was like, "This isn't what we want."
Leah Wietholter:
Completely wrong. I don't think I've ever been completely wrong.
Rachel Organist:
None of the concerns. She was like, "No, you said, we were concerned about like A, B, and C, but actually, it's X, Y, and Z." We were like, "I'm glad that we had this conversation now."
Leah Wietholter:
Which, yeah, I hadn't thought about this case before we started recording, but what we gave them was exactly what they told us they were concerned about.
Rachel Organist:
I think this is another thing that's great about the case plan is that a lot of times clients don't even really know what they want, or they think they know, but if you then spell it back to them in this more organized way, like, "Okay, we think you are interested in finding the answer to this, this, and this, and here's what we're going to do to find it," only once they see it put in that framework, they can say, "Oh, that's not. No." They still might not even know what they want. It's kind of like when someone in your family is like, "Ooh, I don't really want to eat at this restaurant you suggested," but they don't give you another suggestion.
Leah Wietholter:
Right, right.
Rachel Organist:
Clients, it's okay that they do you this, but a lot of times, they do that. They're like, "Oh, this isn't what I want, but I don't know what I do want." But I feel like the case plan process can be an awesome communication tool for making sure that you guys are on the same page, helping them clarify what their goals are because you're making them set a goal at the beginning, instead of just saying, "We're going to investigate," which is just not going to be a great use of resources.
Leah Wietholter:
Something else that I honestly had not thought of until something you just said about all your favorite things about case planning is that it allows us, knowing that we have this process that we're about to walk through step-by-step, but knowing that we have this case-planning process, it allows us, I think, to be more creative about the investigations that we can actually take on. It doesn't have to fit within the four corners of an embezzlement investigation and the client doesn't have to know how somebody stole, but then it doesn't have to feel like giving somebody a blank check to investigate every area of their business that...
Leah Wietholter:
I mean, this goes back to the risk based analysis, but every area that has a risk to make sure it provides this organized framework, like you talked about. But then we can take cases like this one with the school district that I think before case planning, I would've been like, "Yeah, I think we can probably figure out analysis to do that," but I just usually know that whatever the client is coming, it doesn't even have to be financial information. In that case, it was not, there was no financial data in that case, I think.
Rachel Organist:
Yeah, not really. It was like comparing contracts.
Leah Wietholter:
Right, but it was an investigation, and so I think it's really, this process empowers an investigator to say, "Okay." This is really a framework for solving problems for clients in an exploratory way, but with structure so that, and this is the part I know I said I wouldn't talk about this as a business owner, but I can't help it, but it reduces the risk of client dissatisfaction. It reduces the risk of bad Google reviews. It reduces the risk of nonpayment. All of those things are important in order to stay in business. We've been in business 11 years now. I mean, it's been touch and go a few times in the past, but this is what really made it like, "Oh, my gosh. We can answer clients' questions."
Leah Wietholter:
Then I think that fine line sometimes for testifying experts is, yeah, but I can't be hired to say what the client wants me to say, but this framework allows us to say, "Okay, we're going to take your problem, your concern, your questions, and we're going to create a plan to address those things and give you the results of those findings, and it may not be what you want it to be. We're not promising that."
Rachel Organist:
That's a great point, too. Another thing that I love about it is it's an excellent framework because, yeah, I could see how a lot of people might say, "Oh, well, how do you reconcile providing fantastic client service with the fact that you need to be this impartial third party?" To me, those things aren't contradictory at all because I see every day how we execute these case plans that do exactly that, but I could see how that could be a concern. But this helps you make sure that like you are addressing what the client wants you to address, but you're still doing it in a neutral exploratory, or neutrally. You are answering the questions the client wants you to answer, you're not necessarily getting the answers the client wants you to get, if that makes sense.
Leah Wietholter:
Yes, yes. We'll talk about this in couple of episodes following this one about the different analyses that we perform and the datasets we look at. When they tell us what their concerns are or what question they want answered, we're not agreeing with them, and then going and finding data that agrees with them. We're finding a dataset that we can analyze to then see, are there indicators in this dataset as a whole, for the entire period that will then answer their question. Did someone, did an employee take money that benefited them directly instead of the company? We'll get into more of that.
Leah Wietholter:
But everything starts with our risk-based analysis, which is why we recorded that episode first, so go back and listen to it so that can kind of set up this case planning. Then now, we're going to talk about case planning today. When I wrote the book, I'm not going to lie, I struggled to tell people exactly how this works because I'm so proud of it. Some people said, "I can't believe you're going to actually tell people your secret sauce." But I think our analyses are awesome. I think we have simplified financial investigations through using data amazingly, especially with the tools that are available today in 2022. I think the secret sauce is our case planning.
Rachel Organist:
100%.
Leah Wietholter:
All right, let's share our secret sauce.
Rachel Organist:
You guys are so lucky to be hearing this right now. I can't even tell you. Seriously will change your life.
Leah Wietholter:
It changed mine.
Rachel Organist:
I'm joking, but I'm not joking.
Leah Wietholter:
No, I didn't even think you were joking because that's how much I believe it. I want to go through the steps to our Data Sleuth case-planning process with you. Rachel, we talked about client intake, or I did with Megan a couple of episodes ago. That's really where a case starts. Then we go into risk based analysis as part of that conversation, but then it bleeds over into this case planning. But what are those actual steps? I mean, what does that, what does it look like at Workman Forensics? Megan, someone will call, she has a client intake call, or Justin now is on our team, they'll take a new client call, they'll get the information, and then the client says, "Yes, I want to move forward," and we do all the engagement letter, da, da, da, da, da, and then she schedules what we call our "case-planning workshop." When that happens, what does the workshop look like, and then what does that process within that workshop?
Rachel Organist:
Something that I think is pretty cool and pretty central to the idea of if you're going to do this as a team, obviously, if you are just a sole proprietor, you can totally use case planning, too, and you 100% should, but if you want to use it as a tool to get a team working together, I think it's pretty neat that everyone is in the case-planning workshop that is sometimes even if we know someone is not probably going to work this case because they're full, or it's just a really small case, usually, they'll still be in the case-planning workshop because it's just we want maximum availability of ideas.
Rachel Organist:
Even our data processing specialist or someone who's probably only work on the data processing side of things, it's really valuable for them to be in the workshop, too, for a lot of reasons. They will probably have some insight if we have questions about, "Ooh, if all they have available is this kind of data, is that going to be budget-efficient to work on?" Or we might have strictly data-processing-related questions, but I also think it's really beneficial to have those people involved because as they're going through the data processing, sometimes there's judgment calls, or you just might choose to do things differently if you have a sense of the bigger picture of the case and what the analyst is going to be looking for. I mean, we work together really closely throughout that process, too, to answer those kinds of questions, but I do just think it's really valuable for everyone to be involved in case planning for those kinds of reasons. Then we have everyone in this workshop, we have our case-planning worksheet, which is also in the book, and maybe online.
Leah Wietholter:
It's only in the book. It's only in the book.
Rachel Organist:
You have to do it. Buy the book.
Leah Wietholter:
But there is a download that comes with the books, but yeah, no, I don't give away the secret sauce for free, you have to buy the book.
Rachel Organist:
I mean, this is a really good secret sauce. We get our case-planning worksheet out, we all hop on a call, and the first step has kind of already been started by whoever's been in contact with the client, so one of our case managers, and they'll outline what the client's concerns are based on their discussions with the client.
Rachel Organist:
Then the next column, I was just thinking about this a minute ago, when we were talking about, how do you balance great client service, but not just telling the client what they want to hear? I think this step is really key. It's kind of a newer evolution in how we talk about the case plan, but we take those client concerns, and we translate them into Workman investigation priorities.
Rachel Organist:
I think that the language that you use here is really important. Even when it was just client concerns, one thing that I've talked about before in trainings is, and I also harp on this, everyone is probably sick of me in case-planning workshops, because I'm always like, "Eh, can we rephrase that?", because I don't want, and now the client concerns now that we have that as a separate column, I think that can kind of be a little fuzzier. I mean, it's truly just, what is the client concerned about? What do they want to see that we're going to address?
Rachel Organist:
But if you're talking about what are your investigation priorities, I think they really need to be action words. I mean, are you quantifying something? Are you identifying something? Are you determining whether something is true or reconciled? What are you doing? It's like, what are you going to do? Sometimes worked in there gets what question isn't answering, or it should be clear how that does address the concern, or how the two tie together.
Rachel Organist:
Then I also think that going through that process is why this is so great for keeping you neutral is your investigation priority is never going to be something like, "Show that so-and-so took the money."
Leah Wietholter:
Exactly.
Rachel Organist:
I'm thinking of that, you'll know what case I'm talking about here, too, where it's like, "Show that it was these temporary employees responsible for the inventory loss and not our full-time employees because then our insurance will pay for it." Sometimes a client has a real clear idea of what has been happening, but your investigation priority, you shouldn't phrase it in a way that leads you to a certain answer, it should be more like tasks are we going to perform to get an answer to this question.
Leah Wietholter:
I think if we did have a dropdown box for the investigation priorities in our worksheet, it would be like the action words. It would be quantify, determine, verify, or identify whether or not, or reconcile. Those are probably the top four words that we use all the time.
Rachel Organist:
Yeah. Which is crazy because it's like our cases are so diverse, but truly, most things break down into you are doing one of those things.
Leah Wietholter:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.
Rachel Organist:
It's not that complicated.
Leah Wietholter:
No, it's really not.
Rachel Organist:
Yeah, I think that step is really key. I also think that is kind of the trickiest step, or at least it takes the most practice, both because you're trying to frame everything in that very like objective and action-oriented mindset, but also seeing through, I don't know if "red herrings" is the right term because they're very unintentional, but a lot of times, the straight-up client concerns or notes from client discussions can be full of basically red herrings. They can get really hung up on like a specific detail, or this one specific payment, or whatever, when that's not really, we're not going to build a whole analysis around one check that they know she wrote to so-and-so, or whatever. I mean, that might be something we make a note of, and yeah, when we go through the bank statements and analyze them, we will keep an eye out for this type of thing. I think sorting through those details that are very important to the client, but not necessarily going to make up a big part of your analysis is a key part of that translation to the investigation priorities.
Leah Wietholter:
I agree.
Rachel Organist:
We do that. Then the next step, or it's not really in sequence like that, but the next column in the worksheet and something we're always thinking about is just questions that come up for the client because no matter how thorough your initial conversation was, there will always be more things once you really start. Even if you're doing this by yourself, again, once you really start thinking through how you want to build the investigation, there'll be more things that you want to ask them, so noting that.
Rachel Organist:
Then we move on to just drilling down the next level, or getting even more specific than those investigation priorities. We might say that we want to quantify expenditures that didn't benefit the state, or whatever, but what does that look like? What analysis are we going to do? We have some different in-house standard analyses that we always have in our. I think we will talk about those in an upcoming episode, so that'll be fun. But sometimes we have to come up with stuff that's a little more custom, or get a little bit more creative, depending on what the case needs, and so that'll be the next thing that we think about. Then in tandem with that, it's what data or documentation do you need to perform those analyses? Then that's the basis of our document request list that goes out to the client.
Leah Wietholter:
Yeah. On that data piece, I think one thing that as I've talked to other investigators about it, or even added people to our team, or working with some other professionals on some cases, what you said, it's exactly how we do it, but I want to make the distinction. You said, "Then we identify the data we need." We don't ask the client, "Send us all your financial information. We're going to sort through this and then we're going to create a plan based on what you have." We create it based on what we need. I want to start with the most ideal list of information and the best evidence in that initial document list. That comes from the analyses that we know in order to quantify, we need to do these things, and to do these things, we need these sources of information. Then that way we're starting with the best list.
Leah Wietholter:
I've actually been able to, this was many, many years ago, but I created that list for a client. The client sent me nothing I asked for and just what she thought I needed and I said, "I can't use this. You need to send me everything." We kind of went back and forth. "No, you don't." "Yes, I do." Blah, blah, blah. Then it hit me, "Oh, she doesn't want to provide me with the information I've asked for because she wants me to provide her narrative. She wants me to rubber stamp her narrative." That's, once again, by determining what data do we need to process this and starting with the most ideal, like the highest list of information, then we can always make adjustments based on what the client has, but let's ask for the best-case scenario.
Leah Wietholter:
I think a really good example of this one was when there were some potential fake vendors, and yeah, mainly fake vendors, but some purchasing issues within a company. We sent them, "Okay, this would be the most ideal information to perform these tasks and to address your concerns." They came back and they said, "We just realized our system doesn't keep these things," and so it actually helped us as investigators to not look like we didn't know what we were doing, but it helped them highlight, "Oh, man. We had never even thought about tracking this." They were really a large organization that should have been tracking this because there was no way to audit anything because they didn't have certain functions turned on and so then that also helped us. It just changed the focus of our scope, "Okay, well, if you don't have these things, then going forward, this is how you can improve these things."
Rachel Organist:
Yeah. Or sometimes we can say, "Well, we can back into it. It's not ideal, but we can back into it because you do have these other two data sources." But yeah, in that case it's like, well, it was kind of unsatisfying, but there was a value-add for them pretty early on by them realizing, "Wow, we really need to upgrade our processes and the way we're tracking this data."
Leah Wietholter:
I think it's more frustrating to start with the data dump from the client and think that that's all they have and later say, "Well, we could have done more with this had we had..." Then they go, "Oh, we had that." Oh, my gosh. Let's just start with what would be our dream list to do all of this analysis with the client, and then they know upfront, these are the things we need.
Leah Wietholter:
Hi, everyone. It's Leah. My new book, Data Sleuth: Using Data and Forensic Accounting, Engagements, and Fraud Investigations launches April 19th. To celebrate, we're 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.
Leah Wietholter:
Now, something that came up recently in a new client call actually created this next question for you. How are we able to even create a case plan without reviewing the documentation from the client?
Rachel Organist:
Yeah. I think this is interesting. It's one of those questions that like wouldn't have occurred to me until a client asked it because it's like, oh, well, we just do this. We do it all the time. But I thought about it, and I think the main reason it works is that basically every case that we work, as diverse as they all are, which we've talked about multiple times, can be viewed through just a couple of frameworks. We use that word all the time. One is the what happened versus what should have happened. That's a question that we apply to almost every case. Something that's similar, sometimes the same thing, sometimes it's not, is where did money come from and where did it go?
Rachel Organist:
As long as you can look at a case in one of those two ways, they're kind of all the same. The datasets that you're going to be looking at to answer those questions are going to be different for different cases, but essentially, every client concern boils down to one or both of those questions, and so I think that's really the answer. We're just applying the same framework to every case. As long as the client is upfront with us about their processes and the information that's available and what their concerns are, which they are, well, we can always put it into a investigation plan that we're going to work.
Leah Wietholter:
This is an ongoing process. We don't just set the case plan and then say, "This is what we're going to do for you." This is iterative, collaborative with the client.
Rachel Organist:
Yes. Yeah, that's not to say that we just write a case plan and they sign it and it never evolves and concerns never get dropped or added because they do all the time, and so I guess that's important for the client to know, too. You're going to approve this, we're going to start working on it, but as we go, you might uncover more things, we might uncover things that, or we might find out that you thought you had this data available, but really, it's not available, and so we can't really address this concern. We definitely address as we go along.
Leah Wietholter:
I've noticed lately in several of our case-planning workshops, we've started saying, "Okay, we would want to do this kind of analysis," but based on what we get there, we kind of need to make this to-be-determined analysis because we know there might be another step where we need to circle back up again and do a second workshop, which seems most common when our client has very little control. That seems to be the indicator right now that could change, but we've been having to add that little TBD to our case plan.
Rachel Organist:
Which normally, I would hate because I just feel like that's not my personality, but I kind of like it because it's just embracing reality, and it feels better to do it upfront than to think like, "Here's our case plan. Go," and then we're working it, and then I realize, "Ugh, these two datasets like do not reconcile," and we actually did expect them to, or the results of this analysis were not even close to what we thought it was going to be, so that totally affects what we were going to do next. It's kind of nice to like build that in and know we're probably going to have to regroup after we do items one and two to decide how we want to go with item three. Yeah, that's definitely, I like that we've started doing that. We didn't really talk about it. We just started doing it.
Leah Wietholter:
Then I wanted to just take a minute before we talk about an example, but I wanted to just take a minute on the sole proprietor issue, or a single investigator. There was a period of time that I did not have employees, maybe like one year, and I started thinking, "Well, how did I plan for these cases when I was just by myself?" There's just no way you can know everything about everything, right? In these workshops, it's so great because someone has, depending on their experience, now we have Justin on the team and he's very fresh out of audit, and he'll say, "Well, what if we looked at it this way?", and I'm like, "Oh, we haven't considered looking at this this way in a while." Then we have this discussion. That's just so valuable.
Leah Wietholter:
I thought about what did I do as a sole proprietor working cases by myself that I would get to where I felt like, "Okay, I've got a comprehensive case plan for a client without that team setting," and I think I just created pseudo teams. I would think to myself, "Okay, this is what the client needs me to address. This is what I want to do. This is the information I need." I mean, everything that we've talked about. But then if I had a concern that I just wasn't familiar with, I would reach out to somebody, and then I would tell them the case story, and then they would go, "Oh, well, did you think about doing this?" Or then they start asking questions and I would go, "Oh, I need to go ask the client about that question," so I kind of created my own collaborative back then to make sure that I had thought about this. I think you could probably do it with some attorneys, but I don't know. I think talking to another forensic accountant or fraud investigator or somebody with a lot of experience, that's just really helpful, so even if you work by yourself, I don't want you to think that you can't do this case-planning process because I absolutely did.
Rachel Organist:
Yeah, that's really cool. Use your network.
Leah Wietholter:
All right, do you have a case example that we've worked where you could take a client's concerns and illustrate how those breakdown into our investigative priorities and how does that actually break down into a case plan?
Rachel Organist:
Yeah. I am thinking of a case that we worked a couple of years ago, I think maybe two, that was a pretty straightforward embezzlement case. I think it was a pretty small business. I don't think he had a lot of employees, or at least not full-time main-office-type employees, but the business owner, who was our client, did have this one woman who had done basically all of his bookkeeping and general management, those types of things. I believe she actually confessed to him, but I think what first came to his attention, and she had confessed before he ever even came to us, so he comes to us with a story. He says, "I noticed some things in QuickBooks that were not right, some checks that had just been hanging out, not cleared," or some customer deposits. I think maybe some of each that were just not cleared in QuickBooks for multiple years. Then he started digging around a little bit more and questioned this employee and she confessed to him that she had been using company funds for her own personal benefit. That's the story that he came to us with.
Rachel Organist:
What I just think is a good example in this case is that's kind of the turning case drama into a case plan aspect. You know, he had certain things, he was really concerned about these QuickBooks entries, but we kind of zeroed in on, I mean, because this type of case is really, I don't want to say our bread and butter anymore because I feel like now we're really into the more complex cases, but this is the type of case that's just the stereotypical Data Sleuth process works awesome for these kinds of embezzlements, so we immediately were like, "Wow, we just need to quantify the funds that were used not for the benefit of his company, basically, and that's the lost." That's concern number one and investigation priority number one. Then concern number two... That's kind of the meat and potatoes of the case, quantifying the loss, and we'll talk about the analyses that we were going to use to get there.
Rachel Organist:
Then concern number two was kind of a secondary thing, identifying whether these unclear checks and deposits in QuickBooks were related to the embezzlement at all, or were they just mistakes because she also just wasn't a very good bookkeeper? That aspect of it, I guess this is something we didn't really talk about in this episode, but if what we're primarily usually trying to do in these cases is identify the loss or the benefit, the other thing we like to try to do is identify or tell the story around it, add some color that basically makes the case that it was intentional, or that the subject was involved.
Rachel Organist:
I know this is in the book, but people like to go straight to the accounting records, thinking that's where the loss is, but really, we care about cash when we are quantifying the loss, so we have that as our concern number one, and then number two is just going to be to do the as QuickBooks analysis. It fulfills a couple of purposes. It can potentially tell the how, how is the fraud perpetrated, but it also just investigates something that's been bothering the client. Sometimes they just need to know, they just need to know that you looked at it, and that you followed up on a specific observation that they had. Those were our two concerns in that case. Again, pretty simple. Then our analysis was just our standard, anytime we're going to quantify a loss or quantify funds, not for the benefit of the business, or the estate, or what have you. We have some standard analyses that we do for that. I don't know if you want me to talk about them, or if it's just next time.
Leah Wietholter:
We'll just save them for next time, yeah.
Rachel Organist:
Yeah, that's something we'll dig into soon, but basically, summarizing all the expenses and looking for the ones that didn't benefit the business. Then we talked about the data that would go into that, and it's pretty much just bank statements and the QuickBooks backup that she used. That's really it. I mean, that's a particularly simple example, but once you get used to putting things through the case-planning worksheet, it's not complicated, which is why it's so awesome.
Leah Wietholter:
I think that it's a very logical tool to take something that's typically overwhelming. We have our investigation games and when we were going in-person and doing The Case of the Man Cave, the tabletop game, the initial feeling and feedback I would get as I was moderating was, "Oh, my gosh, we don't know where to start." People hated that, hated that, so if you play the game, you just have to suffer through it. But because, and I talk about, it's intentional because that is how every case begins, and you and I have talked about this a lot, that it will feel like Megan will come and tell us, "This is what the client's concerned about. Here's the story, here's the drama," and then we'll get to our case planning and we just start walking through those steps, methodically and logically, and by the end, it's like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be so good.
Rachel Organist:
It's so true. I've gotten way better. I used to, honestly, start every case planning workshop with, "I don't know if we can help this person. This is a mess." If I just were to read your guys' notes, or hear Megan's summary of the story, I'm like, "Ugh." But then every time, by the end, an hour goes by, and I'm pumped, like, "I know we can solve this. They're going to love us."
Leah Wietholter:
Right. Something that really came out in the book, I think, is how client-centric we are. We're client-centric, but also, we're very particular about maintaining that standard of objectivity and independence. I think with the process and just everything we set up, it's about, how is this going to affect our client? How does this better communicate with our client? How do we make sure we're on the same page with our client? That's why we start with those client concerns. Because at the end of the day, that is our business, right?
Leah Wietholter:
But I think it's applicable, even if I work in internal audit, even if I work in internal investigations, there's still only so many resources, or even law enforcement. There's only so much time. It may not be actual dollars, but so much time that can be spent on different matters, and by using risk-based analysis, and then that bleeding over into case planning, then I can start going, "Okay, these are the major things I need to focus on," and then I can be very task-oriented, and then now, we have a process. Then that makes it where we can work with a team, and then at the end of the day, we have such great client satisfaction at the end.
Rachel Organist:
Love it. Yeah, and like you said, even if you're in a setting where you don't have clients, per se, or a budget, per se, everyone has stakeholders that they're ultimately trying to get the best results for, and everyone has limited resources, so I think it really applies no matter what.
Leah Wietholter:
I agree. I love it. I love our case-planning process, and even though I was scared at first, I am very excited to share this with our investigative community because I'm just all about making investigations. I really think investigations can solve so many problems in the world, and obviously, I'm really biased about that, but it's really just creatively solving problems and using a hypothesis and data. I think maybe that's why if people don't know you, your background's actually in geology.
Rachel Organist:
I just thought of something else, and this kind of relates to like scientific investigations versus fraud investigations versus the other, duh, amazing thing that I love about this whole case planning framework is it's a communication tool, not just at the beginning, but it's how we frame up our findings at the end and our report because like you said, I think investigations can solve a lot of problems out there, but also, clear communication of an investigation.
Leah Wietholter:
Yes.
Rachel Organist:
What data was it based on, and then what were the findings, is game-changing, and I think this is awesome for that. But yes, it is pretty crazy how much what we do here at Workman has in common with scientific investigations. I was never a long-time researcher or anything, but I have a geology master's degree from Penn State, so I did a thesis on rocks in Northern California. Then I was a petroleum geologist for a few years. It's honestly like all the same thing. We basically frame up a question that we're asking, whether it's, "When did this region become mountainous?", or, "Which is the best area to drill for oil and gas?" Then we think about what data we need to answer it, and then we go get that data, and run some analyses, so that's what we do here.
Leah Wietholter:
We're not doing anything crazy. This isn't earth-shattering, it's just applying a very logical framework and steps. I'm excited to in a couple weeks talk to you about our data standard data, sleuth analyses and the data sources and start piecing some of those things together that ultimately, yeah, all of these things create the outline for our findings. Then what I think is so cool is that if someone wants to verify what we've done, they can. We have nothing to hide. We're not trying to just pull the wool over someone's eyes. You can go and recalculate this yourself. You can go find this data yourself.
Rachel Organist:
Which is also very scientific, reproducibility, man.
Leah Wietholter:
Right. Oh, you know all these great words. I'm just like, "How can I keep my business working and hire people?" But this is actually like a real thing.
Leah Wietholter:
Well, thanks so much for chatting with me about this, Rachel. We'll make sure, of course, once again, to link to the book, and yeah, the case plan, you got to buy the book to get the free downloads.
Rachel Organist:
You'll love it.
Leah Wietholter:
You will. Thanks, Rachel.
Rachel Organist:
Yep.
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.