Financial Fraud Research Center
The Financial Fraud Research Center of Stanford University serves as a hub in the fight against financial fraud, with a particular focus on consumer financial fraud – fraud achieved using deception. This includes crimes such as lottery fraud, investment scams, and online phishing schemes. The center provides three key functions: consolidation of information, translation of research into practice, and promotion of research and funding. The center’s resources on translation of research into practice exemplify evidence-based recommendations for the MFF715 student. This site differs from Carlow’s Evidence-Based Center for Fraud and Forensics in one important way: Their recommendations are consumer victims, whereas our center features recommendations for fraud-fighting professionals.
The Institute for Fraud Prevention
The Institute for Fraud Prevention (IFP) is an industry/university cooperative research effort dedicated to multi-disciplinary research, education and prevention of fraud and corruption. The IFP’s primary mission is to improve the ability of business and government to combat these crimes and to educate the general public on effective methods of recognizing and deterring them.
With partners in the banking sector on the Wall Street, the IFP emphasizes research on corporate fraud, as opposed to consumer fraud. Research studies sponsored by the IFP (including a study headed by Professor Rachel Chung at Carlow University) provide scientific evidence that can be translated into evidence-based recommendations for the fraud practitioner.
Professor Dan Ariely applies principles of behavioral economics to the understanding of dishonesty, cheating,and other behaviors that characterize fraudsters. Ariely’s blog features frequent updates about Ariely’s often hilarious insights about cheaters, liars, and financial crime. Ariely is the author of the book “The Honest Truth about Dishonesty.”
Listen to Dan Ariely’s iTune channel here
Watch a cartoon version of Ariely’s work on cheating here
Sign up for Ariely’s open course on irrational behavior here (Limited time frame)
Practitioners of fraud and forensics make critical decisions every day – Is this enough evidence for fraud? Does our code of ethics really work? Are our auditors competent at detecting fraud? Can I tell if this person is lying? Are the flagged cases really fraudulent or not? Should I seek criminal prosecution of this case?
Practitioners in the criminal justice systems have to make many of the same decisions, and how these decisions are made can have profound implications for the lives of the accused, and lives of the victims, and broader social justice issues.
The webpage “Evidence-Based Criminology” as part of the Evidence-Based Management website by Professors Pfeffer and Sutton, two of the World’s 50 Best Business School Professors, provides many resources on how to practice evidence-based criminology, and why it is important, both pragmatically and ethically.
The Innocence Project’s mission is to free the staggering numbers of innocent people who remain incarcerated and to bring substantive reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment. As of October 2012, 300 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row. Systematic analysis of these exoneration cases reveal significant problems with techniques for criminal investigation, including eyewitness identification, and forensic practices based on junk science. Although none of these exonerated cases involved financial fraud, lessons learned from these cases have significant implications for forensic investigation of fraud accusations.
The mission of The Arson Research Project is to identify cases where arson convictions have been based on unreliable evidence and to educate and inform the criminal justice and fire investigation communities.
Center for Evidence-Based Fraud and Forensics 