Samantha joins the Dallas office with over 15 years’ experience across a variety of industry, accounting, and forensic services. Samantha has a wealth of experience in leading a variety of fraud and misconduct investigations, including regulatory-related matters such as anti-bribery, anti-money laundering and tax fraud. She has led some high profile Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigations on alleged violations for client’s global subsidiaries and operations.

Samantha commented “I am excited to join FRA while the company is experiencing such rapid growth. FRA’s ability to remain at the forefront in such a highly competitive market is exceptional. I look forward to working with the calibre of talent the firm has to offer globally. I will be assisting the firm in establishing its presence in Dallas and will be actively involved in our marketing efforts, while ensuring our clients continue to receive the highest level of service from FRA.”

FRA’s Mike Trahar is speaking at The Masters Conference at the Cardozo Law School in New York today on the panel; Investigate This! eDiscovery Is Not Just for Litigation Anymore. Mike will be joined by David Shilling, Sidley, Phil Cohen, Greenberg Traurig, David Rogers, PWC and Diane Kilcoyne, ESI Group.

The reasonable anticipation or filing of a litigation case is only one event that can trigger a need for eDiscovery. These days, eDiscovery also plays an important part in conducting investigations to meet compliance, due diligence or regulatory enforcement requirements. The panellists will share experiences and provide examples of the use of eDiscovery technology and best practices to meet investigative objectives. Topics will include common types of investigations involving eDiscovery; similarities and differences from eDiscovery in litigations; data discovery, data privacy and cross-border implications; common mistakes to avoid; dealing with phones/BYOD issues during investigations and best practices for managing eDiscovery in investigations.

The Masters Conference brings together leading experts and professionals from law firms, corporations, and the bench to develop strategies, practices, and resources for managing the information lifecycle.

Mike Trahar, Director

FRA’s Jenny Bi, Jordan Heier, Pranali Shetty and Ambrose Amin attended the ACFE Global Fraud 2018 Conference in June.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners is the world’s largest anti-fraud organization and provider of anti-fraud training and education. The conference hosted experts in the anti-fraud field who addressed the latest trends and issues.

Key insights from the conference include:

Trends for the industry:

• Emerging technologies to play an important role in the industry: block chain, AI, machine learning
• Data is becoming an important commodity: monitoring and mining data could help with effective risk management and controls
• Collaboration is key to success: collaboration among different teams, functions, jurisdictions leads to success on fraud investigation

Data analytics:

• Data can be leveraged for:
  • Fraud monitoring and detection
  • Fraud investigations
  • Fraud analytics and reporting
  • Enhancing existing fraud tools
• There are many tools on the market to help integrate data science and machine learning in forensic analytics; no one tool can solve all the problems and challenges and a suite of tools and problem solving skills are required.

Trends for FCPA enforcement:

• Multi-jurisdiction: will see more countries with similar enforcement and cross-jurisdiction collaboration
• Focusing on individuals instead of only going after corporations
• Focusing on books and records issues
• Recurring enforcement actions
• DOJ & SEC pushing boundaries of the definition of “foreign official”

Trends for Shell companies:

• Shell companies can be found in nearly every type of business transaction and are on the rise with risks appear repetitively in every in industry and country. They help facilitate crimes and the losses are substantial with even larger fines in cases where they are identified as being used.
• Increased risks are direct results of several converging and compounding effects that are increasing the ease of shell company usage, while at the same time decreasing the probability of detection.

New Revenue Recognition Standards:

• ASC 606 is possibly the most significant change in financial reporting in a generation. The response from companies will require modification to data analytics, internal audit and investigation procedures. There will be fraud risks associated with ASC 606. Subsequently, this can lead to new opportunities for work for audit and forensic accounting firms.

FRA launched their first three Chief Ethics and Compliance round table events in the Nordics in June on corporate behavior and ethics & compliance in partnership with Steptoe.

The first three roundtables took place in Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen. The theme of the sessions was “How do we conduct ourselves in a corporate/organizational context?”

Ms Hui Chen, former special advisor to DOJ in matters of ethics and compliance and today ethics and compliance advocate, spoke at the events about “Empowering Values – why is that a matter for the CECO?”

The Nordic Chief Ethics & Compliance round tables were arranged in cooperation with Michaela Ahlberg at The Grey Zone AB, Tormod Tingstad at Kammeradvokaten / Adv. firma Poul Schmith and Anna Romberg at Cargotec.

If you would like to attend future round table events please email us to be added to the invite list.

Bill has over 21 years of experience in computer forensics investigations, intrusion investigations, electronic discovery and expert testimony. He leads teams in conducting digital forensic and intrusion investigations into complex global matters, including theft of intellection property, external cyber-attacks, insider threat, and data manipulation.

Bill began his career in this area as a Special Agent with the FBI where he received training in general investigative techniques, computer intrusion and security matters and national intelligence and counterintelligence matters. During his service, William managed the computer forensics lab for the Houston office of the FBI and was involved in nearly all the 200+ federal matters investigated by the FBI, ranging from white-collar crime to terrorism and national security matters.

Bill said of this appointment “Prior to joining, I was aware of FRA’s reputation in the industry as a global leader in forensic investigations. It was not until I joined the FRA family that I fully appreciated FRA’s value, work ethic, and depth of knowledge in assisting clients in investigations. I am quite lucky to have the ability to work with so many knowledgeable and passionate people at all levels, disciplines and backgrounds. FRA is an exceptional workplace and is the standard by which other firms should be held.”

Bill will be based in FRA’s Texas office.

Read more about Bill.