Resilience in Fraud Risk Management

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Resilience in Fraud Risk Management

If there’s one lesson anti-fraud professionals should take from the trials of 2020, Abed Bazzi, CFE, encourages people to grasp the importance of a robust fraud risk management plan. In his virtual 2021 ACFE Fraud Conference Middle East session, Bazzi, a partner in the Forensic Services practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, emphasized how both fraud risk and actual fraud have increased within the past year, and he urged businesses to build resilience to be ready to respond during crisis moments.

Bazzi began by explaining how the Middle East experienced a “dual shock” in 2020 due to both the pandemic and lower oil prices. These combined occurrences affected the economic cycles, increasing financial pressures on citizens and companies and heightening fraud risk levels.

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How to Remain Relevant as a Fraud Examiner in a Rapidly Shifting Digital World

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How to Remain Relevant as a Fraud Examiner in a Rapidly Shifting Digital World

Hossam El Shaffei, founder and managing director of Oversight Consulting and Training, started off his ACFE Fraud Conference Middle East session with a question that’s been on many fraud examiners’ minds throughout the past year: How do we efficiently and effectively conduct fraud investigations remotely?

While the pandemic has introduced a lot of new norms and skills to the industry, El Shaffei noted that fraud examiners have also had to navigate new challenges associated with malpractice.

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ACFE and Capital Market Authority of Saudi Arabia to Hold Virtual 2021 ACFE Fraud Conference Middle East this April

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ACFE and Capital Market Authority of Saudi Arabia to Hold Virtual 2021 ACFE Fraud Conference Middle East this April

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), in collaboration with the Capital Market Authority of Saudi Arabia, will host the 2021 ACFE Fraud Conference Middle East in a virtual format, 7-8 April. This conference will bring together professionals from the Middle Eastern region working in both public and private sectors, and will provide a platform to exchange ideas, expertise and discuss the latest trends and tools in fraud detection, response and prevention.

Attendees will hear from His Excellency Mr. Mohammed El Kuwaiz, Chairman of the Capital Market Authority of Saudi Arabia; Preet Bharara, senior CNN legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York; and Pamela Barnum, a trust strategist and body language expert. They will be joined by other expert speakers who will help attendees explore important cases and trends that have emerged in technological development, risk management and fraud prevention.

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Why Fraud Examiners Need to Be Familiar With the Dark Web

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Why Fraud Examiners Need to Be Familiar With the Dark Web

“When I first entered [the dark web] about five years back, I couldn’t go to sleep for days. It is disturbing.” This is one of the first things Ritesh Bhatia said during his presentation at the 2019 ACFE Fraud Conference Middle East. Bhatia’s session, “Dark Web Threat Intelligence and Investigations,” focused on what the dark web is and why fraud examiners need to be familiar with it if they want to stay ahead of fraudsters.

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How to Stop Fraud in Loyalty Programs

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How to Stop Fraud in Loyalty Programs

Whether it’s a local grocery store, a national restaurant chain or international airlines, loyalty programs have become an ingrained part of modern consumer life. While providing your name and email when making a purchase may seem like a harmless extra step to add, loyalty programs are becoming increasingly valuable sources for fraud.

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Working with Data Analytics to Track Tax Evasion

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Working with Data Analytics to Track Tax Evasion

Tax fraud is a problem that affects every country around the world. As the Panama Papers and subsequent Paradise Papers exposed, many individuals and organizations use anonymous shell companies and intermediaries to move money to jurisdictions with favorable tax laws. Some of this is done legally, and considered tax avoidance, but tax evasion is done illegally, making it fraud. In his session at the 2018 ACFE Fraud Conference Middle East, Varun Mehta, CFE, discussed some of the challenges of tracking down tax fraud and how data analytics can be an invaluable tool in that fight.

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The Growing Threat of Business Email Compromise

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The Growing Threat of Business Email Compromise

“In the good old days when I started my career, my life was much easier,” said Issam Zaghloul, CISSP, CISA, CGEIT, Head of Information Security at Majid Al Futtaim Holding. He has been working in the cybersecurity field in one way or another for the last 16 years. The work was easier, he explained, because there wasn’t as much data to track, and it was all stored in centralized locations. In other words, things were simpler and much more straightforward.

Today, however, we eat data for breakfast, according to Zaghloul, and our systems of tracking, moving and storing data have become infinitely more complex.

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