CDIMS GLOBAL PTE. LTD.
CDIMS GLOBAL PTE. LTD.
Case of a lady in a small branch office of a public listed company finding an anonymous obscene note on her desk.She threatened to go to the police.Ethics Counsellor promised her a full investigation.
CDIMS was appointed to use its forensic skill sets to find the author.CDIMS used techniques of document examination, digital forensics, interviewing and field investigation to successfully carry out this investigation.
Several cases where whistleblowers have pointed out malpractices by those within or outside the company. We have applied our experience and our forensic skills to address most of these cases successfully.
In one rare case we have been able to even identify the whistleblower.
This was a case where a large Government company in the Middle East which wanted to determine whether there were any leakages in its huge drilling expenditure. This was one of our most successful assignments where we found almost 13 different leakage points where expenses were being exaggerated.
As a bonus we also uncovered certain expensive equipment which had been written off and forgotten by the company lying with third parties
These are the usual red flags spotted and reported in audit committee meetings such as major stock shortages, corrupt practices, inexplicable drop in sales,incomes, etc. In certain situations these were investigated further.
Our approach was to provide more penetrative findings to determine the method of pilferage, or sales diversions and recommendations for plugging these leakages .
Some of large financial crimes investigated by the Mumbai police, Crime Branch, Economic offences Wing have been investigated by us.
Notable among them was the National Spot Exchange Scam, where CDIMS assisted the police in many areas of investigation.
In one major Life Insurance claim, CDIMS was able to locate a ‘dead’ person alive based on investigation of claim papers and field investigations. CDIMS have investigated several loss of stock claims as well.
Fraud encompasses a wide range of wrongdoings such as theft, embezzlement, larceny, pilferage, corrupt practices, and accounting manipulations. All the foregoing are wrongdoings which are detrimental to a company financially. However there are also other kinds of wrongdoings which adversely affect a company as regards its goodwill, its image and its reputation. These include money laundering, corporate espionage, identity frauds, and sexual abuse which have swelled to massive proportions in the last decade. Corporate management needs to provide measures for prevention and deterrence and where any such case has been reported, such a case needs to be investigated and reported to the appropriate authorities. The following is one case study relating to sexual abuse, through a malicious letter sent to a lady employee in a branch office.
As compared with most other wrongdoings like theft, burglary, dacoity, and pilferage, fraud is committed by wrongdoers who are intelligent. Fraud by such intelligent wrongdoers is not a simple act of deception and seizure of opportunity, but an act (or omission) which is executed with great planning and with full anticipation and preparation to face the after effects and consequences to follow. Such fraudsters take adequate steps to ensure that their acts or omissions are camouflaged to prevent detection. Among the many such methods and techniques used by fraudsters, the time bomb technique is the most devastating. This article illustrates, in two parts, this method using illustrations in two different situations: one in a hospital by a shrewd surgeon to get rid of his competition and one in a five star hotel by an intelligent systems administrator to suppress hotel collections.
In the part I of this article, the principle of the time bomb approach often used by fraudsters was illustrated. Very simply, under this approach, fraudsters carry out an act/omission, which does not impede or affect any routine operation for some time. Such an act/omission remains latent for some time before it brings about devastation in some form. This period of time during which the act/omission remains dormant or latent enables the perpetrator to distance himself from the scene or from involvement, and reduces the chances of any suspicion falling on him. He obviously derives some benefit from the devastation. The previous part illustrated a time bomb effect used by a fraudster in the world of medicine. This part illustrates how this ‘time bomb’ approach was used in a five star hotel to suppress collections.
