Final Project -
Overview: Forensic accounting has been identified as the fastest growing area of accounting. Fraud examiners must understand the legal aspects of fraud and what constitutes fraud. To be successful in this industry, they must be able to determine why people commit fraud and how to prevent it from happening.
Through this analytical process, examiners may then provide organizations with recommendations for improving their internal controls, thus preventing further financial losses and additional harm to their reputations.
For Milestone Two, you will submit an analysis of the business environment and the industry for your chosen company. Consider the industry-specific challenges, behaviors indicative of fraud, and internal control structure and perform a financial statement analysis for your company.
Prompt: Provide the management team of your selected company with an assessment of the business environment and the industry from the perspective of a fraud examiner.
Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:
Business Environment and the Industry
a) What are the industry-specific challenges, such as specialization, competition, or growth, this organization is faced with? How do these challenges relate to the company's business environment?
b) Based on the case study, what behaviors did employees exhibit that were indicative of fraud? Describe the pressures employees faced from management that might have led to the fraud. How could they have been avoided?
c) Assess the strengths of the organization's internal controls. Where are the weaknesses and how might these lead to fraud?
d) How could you address these weaknesses in order to improve them? What measures could you take to ensure this would improve the weaknesses?
e) What sorts of anomalies were contained within the financial statements or additional financial analysis? How do these anomalies relate to the potential fraudulent activity?