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Friday, September 07, 2012
 Stealing from senior citizens is reaching epidemic proportions in this country. Estimates are that scam artists steal over $2.0 billion from unsuspecting seniors each year. [...]
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Tuesday, June 12, 2012
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 Those of us who work in the family law area know that most marriages that end in divorce are in trouble long before the divorce petition is filed. This fact provides ample opportunity for either spouse to hide assets and income. The more animosity there is between the couple, the greater the chance that one or both is hiding income and assets.
Therefore, here are four primary situations that occur that warrant engaging a forensic accountant as part of the divorce team.
When a Closely Held Business is Involved [...]
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Thursday, May 03, 2012
 I recently came across an interesting article written last year by Jonathan Marks of Crowe Horwath. Mr. Marks points out that fraud is not about obstruction, rather it is about deception. He notes that trust is a professional hazard, “if you trust someone you are at risk of being deceived.” [...]
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Tuesday, April 24, 2012
 Valuators and the courts have long struggled with the distinction between personal and enterprise goodwill in divorce valuations. In 2004 David Wood introduced the multi-attribute utility model (MUM) to the valuation community. The model attempts to quantify the attributes of the personal and enterprise goodwill of an organization. Over the ensuing seven years it has developed a following in the BV community. [...]
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Friday, April 20, 2012
 Last week I received a call from a high net worth divorce client. He told me that he had located on the internet a “forensic investigator” who said he could easily locate hidden bank accounts. My client was still fuming about our discussion wherein I told him that we could not get the banks to disclose accounts in his lovely wife’s name and that it was impossible, as a practical matter to find her alleged offshore accounts. When I foolishly asked why he thought she had offshore accounts there was some yelling about a boyfriend from Monaco - but I digress. [...]
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Tuesday, February 14, 2012
 Hide and Go Seek is a children’s game that is often played by one or both spouses involved in divorce proceedings.In recent years, the “hiding” spouses have developed a number of sophisticated techniques to keep assets off the marital balance sheet. Detecting these schemes often requires the Forensic Accountant to venture outside his or her comfort zone and occasionally obtain the services of specialized consultants, such as detectives. [...]
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Friday, January 27, 2012
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 In a nutshell, a collaborative divorce is a method of practicing law in which the attorneys for both parties abandon their adversarial strategy in favor of an approach designed to achieve a negotiated outcome that both parties can live with. Everybody agrees to not commence litigation during the pendency of the proceedings and the attorneys as well as any experts brought into the process are precluded from participating in any litigation that may arise if the collaborative process fails. [...]
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Tuesday, January 10, 2012
 I came across a recent article in BV Update, which discussed five “red flags” for a valuation report. These tips were gleaned from remarks made by tax court judges at the Business Valuation Resources (BVR) annual tax summit held last summer in Washington, DC. I thought they were important to share with my readership and I have incorporated the five highlights below for your review and comment. They are as follows: [...]
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Wednesday, December 28, 2011
 As a former naval aviator, I am instantly attracted to anything to do with aviation. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that there was no fraud investigation to be done in the clouds, rather it was a term of art used to describe offsite storage of data that uses the internet to transport the data. [...]
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Friday, December 09, 2011
 Personal lifestyle investigations are a fascinating part of my services for divorce attorneys. A significant part of these investigations involve a methodical examination of financial records, such as the income tax returns I discussed in my September 29th post. However, for me the real fun involves looking for the behavioral patterns buried within the fiscal data. [...]
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
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 This morning I was reviewing my overnight downloads of fraud cases in the news and realized that of the ten or so cases reported, six of them involved check fraud. You would think that after years of advice to our clients in the form of articles, seminars, risk assessments and fatherly advice that they would get it. Apparently not, since 34% of all fraud reported in the ACFE 2010 fraud report involved check tampering and Ernst and Young recently reported that more than 500 million checks are forged annually. [...]
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Thursday, November 17, 2011
 Last week I attended the annual Family Law Symposium put on by the Maryland Chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. As usual, it was well attended and offered some excellent speakers. Jay Fishman, a giant in the business valuation community, offered tips on how to critically read a business valuation report. Following are some tips I gleaned from Jay’s talk as well as some of my own thoughts. [...]
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Friday, November 11, 2011
 I enjoy divorce work. This comment has raised an eyebrow or two among my peers over the years. However, one of the reasons I enjoy the work is that these days, I tend to be selective in accepting clients. My experience has taught me that there are two ways to accept divorce engagements:
1. Sign up anything that comes in the door
2. Pick and choose carefully using experience and common sense. [...]
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Thursday, November 03, 2011
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 Last week an attorney acquaintance of mine mentioned that she was reviewing a business valuation report from another CPA (yes, I was hurt, but I am a professional and let it pass since she was buying lunch). Now solidly in dangerous territory she pushed on asking – why is it that you people can’t agree on something as simple as a discount? Of course, she was kidding but it does beg the question; what should an attorney be thinking about when considering discounts taken by the valuation expert? [...]
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Thursday, October 27, 2011
 One of my partners joked recently that I am certainly on my way to heaven because of all the embezzlement I have uncovered that was perpetrated on churches. Sadly, little of the cash is ever recovered so I am not sure how much credit I actually get!
The real cost often far exceeds the monetary losses. The real cost of an incident often comes in the aftermath, when the church body learns they have been betrayed. Loss of trust often outweighs the dollars lost to an embezzler. In the worst of cases church members leave in droves and some churches don’t survive. [...]
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Thursday, October 20, 2011
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 I have been asked on more than one occasion recently about the difference in a “Calculation of Value” and a "Conclusion of Value" when it comes to business valuations. Usually the inquiry is more about which one is cheaper rather than which one will provide the level of service needed.
Faced with this question, I try to steer the discussion toward establishing the purpose of the assignment and then explaining the various levels of service that would be appropriate. [...]
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Thursday, October 13, 2011
 This morning Google offered me 24,700,000 hits on Social Security coupled with Ponzi scheme. Now that is a lot of discussion about a rather simplistic scheme to separate people from their money that occurred in 1919. Of course, the real debate is about the approach the country needs to take to fix a program that most agree is broken. For the record and your happy hour debating for the next couple of weeks, this is the real, unbiased, non-political explanation. Since I live close to Washington, you may quote me as a highly placed unnamed source. [...]
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Monday, October 03, 2011
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 In case you were on vacation in August and missed it---- The IRS has released to the public a 107 page document entitled, “Discount for Lack of Marketability Job Aid for IRS Valuation Professionals.” This document summarizes and evaluates most of the methods that are currently in use for determining DLOM. It is primarily intended for internal use by IRS staff involved in review of valuations submitted by business valuators: www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/dlom.pdf [...]
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Thursday, September 29, 2011
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It’s not unusual in my practice to get two or three calls a week from one of the combatants in a divorce case asking if we can find the money and other assets that the #%$, SOB has hidden.
Often this call comes far too late in the divorce process for us to help, but that is a discussion for another day. [...]
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Monday, September 19, 2011
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 Ok, I admit it. I was wrong. Social media is a valuable marketing tool for me. It’s not, as I thought, an excuse to spend time during the work day screwing around on the Internet. After reading Michelle Golden’s excellent book on the subject, “Social Media Strategies for Professionals and their Firms” I became convinced that I needed to get with the program. [...]
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