Fraud is a felony in America and has quite some stern consequences once one is ruled to have committed it. However, it is surprising that most individuals cannot assess and point out fraudulent activities unless they are really conspicuous. For instance, Jean Perkins was able to get away with millions of dollars for a long time due to the ignorance of individuals. Thus expert witnesses are very important when it comes to these kinds of cases. This is because due to their expertise and knowledge in economics as well as finance they can easily translate complex concepts that conceal fraud to a common individual (Justice.gov, 2011).
Jean Perkins was found to have a really complex system of depriving money from not only common individuals but organizations as well. After gaining information from a source in Ukraine, Perkins was able to create fake credit cards after which encoded and used them. Primarily Perkins would gain internal information and impersonate account holders using the credit cards to facilitate financial transaction to other accounts under him (Justice.gov, 2011). Moreover, he created fake merchant accounts of which he used account holders’ cards to purchase fictitious goods through American Express. With such information, it is not inherently clear as to what Perkins was theoretically guilty of to a common individual. As such an expert witness particularly one adept in finance would be needed to help in the prosecution of an adept fraudster (Srivastava, Kundu, Sural & Majumdar, 2008).
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Thereby, a forensic accountant would have most likely been called as an expert witness for a variety of reasons. For one, a forensic accountant would be able to assess and calculate the total amount of funds stolen by Perkins thereby exhibiting the true extent of his crimes. Furthermore, a forensic accountant would be very pivotal in linking the funds held by Perkins to the funds lost by the numerous account holders. This would not only aid in the prosecution on the counts of fraud but also to showcase that theft did indeed happen. Lastly, forensic accountants are skilled in detailing findings of their assessments to managers as such detailing a court would come natural for such individuals (Singleton & Bologna, 2006).
To get an effective account of what Perkins did or even gain information regarding accomplices it follows that Perkins had to be interviewed. However, it is prudent to ask oneself what should have the interviewers been searching for so as to conduct a proper and effective interview. Assuming no concrete evidence that would have properly incriminated Perkins while he was being reprimanded there would a lot to look out for. According to Singleton and Bologna tendency to blame others, increased irritability and inability to look people in the eye are signs of a person who has committed asset misappropriation (2006). Although Perkins did not directly commit asset misappropriation his actions were similar and as such interviewers should have looked into those.
Furthermore, it is important that the interviewers should have looked for evidence of fraudulent activities committed by Perkins. Ramamoorti suggests that majority of the times transactions serve as the primary evidence in fraud cases (2008). Thereby, an interviewer or the interviewers assessing Mr. Perkins should have either gauged Perkins’ reactions to certain transactions or find a way of making him reveal transactions that may incriminate him. It is rather surprising how even the shrewdest fraudsters will cower once suitable and even susceptible evidence is presented. As such the interviewers should have been really keen to notice such reactions and consequently emphasize on them. In conclusion, Perkins was caught with a wide range of incriminating evidence and any interviewer with enough financial knowledge would have hid his/her work cut out.
References
Justice.gov. (2011). Atlanta Man Convicted By Jury for Multi-Million Dollar Fraud Schemes. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/gan/press/2011/06-27-11.html
Ramamoorti, S. (2008). The psychology and sociology of fraud: Integrating the behavioral sciences component into fraud and forensic accounting curricula. Issues in Accounting Education , 23 (4), 521-533.
Singleton, T., & Bologna, J. (2006). Fraud auditing and forensic accounting . Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.
Srivastava, A., Kundu, A., Sural, S., & Majumdar, A. (2008). Credit card fraud detection using hidden Markov model. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and secure computing , 5 (1), 37-48.
