Special Guest HOST: Kelly Paxton, The Pink Collar Crime Expert!

QUESTION: Did you attend the 2023 Fraud Retreat in August 2023? 

If the answer is yes, not only did you get to see Kelly Paxton, you also got to meet Paul Roberts of the FBI, who gave us the inside scoop from the historical Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities Investigation.

Well, since the Fraud Retreat, Kelly has read the book: The End of Normal: A Wife’s Anguish, A Widow’s New Life and would love to share it with you!

Here’s a glimpse into the book: Meet Stephanie Madoff Mack, who was married to Mark Madoff, the son of famed Bernie Madoff. You may remember Mark – the son that committed suicide on the 2nd anniversary of his father’s arrest.  In the book, Stephanie tells the real story of her marriage to Mark, of being a part of the Madoff family, and of life for 2 years following her father-in-law’s arrest and incarceration.

Get ready to get ANOTHER inside look at one of the most controversial stories of our time.

Review the timeline of the family trauma and dissect the ethics of the  family drama with KELLY on October 5th!

Special Guest: Leah Wietholter! Author, CEO and Founder of Workman Forensics in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

While working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Leah discovered an interest and talent for forensic accounting. After leaving the FBI, she served as a senior certified fraud examiner in a Tulsa public accounting firm before leaving to open Workman Forensics in 2010.

With over 15 years of experience and more than 100 cases worked, Leah has honed her industry expertise to create the Data Sleuth® Process—a scalable, data-first approach to Forensic Accounting Engagements and Fraud Investigations. And lucky for us, Leah’s Data Sleuth® Process is now a book, available now here. And we get to hear about it straight from her on July 7th!

Connect with Leah on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter… and don’t miss meeting her on Zoom for this CPE Book Club event!

Special Guest:

Author and Owner of Obermiller Construction Services, Inc., Cheryl Obermiller!

Cheryl Obermiller is an expert in small business fraud… why? She is a major embezzlement survivor.

In 2010, she discovered a long-term embezzlement scheme operating within her company that resulted in her longtime friend and accountant being sent to prison for nearly three years. The confirmed losses totaled nearly half a million dollars, and the real damage probably exceeded a million dollars.

Her unique FraudPoints! system was developed to protect her own company from fraudsters… but it is now available to help protect YOUR company as well.

Cheryl is passionate about helping small business owners (and everyone!) take competent charge of the financial workings of their companies, and empowering them to protect their businesses from embezzlers, thieves, and scallywags!

Special Guest:

Author & The Duchess of Accounting, Iramla Pozo, CPA!

In her book, Advisory Pearls of Wisdom, Iralma shares tales, tips, and thought leadership to set the stage to build an advisory practice (and overall how to have an “owner’s mindset and an entreprenuearial spirit” – one of Jo’s favorite “choices” in her personal development book!).

In this webinar, Iralma will discuss with us how you can shift your mindset from taking orders and working off a script by others, to setting the stage, writing your OWN script, casting, rehearsing, and performing… for your own success.

Jo and Iramla will discuss how to be in “The Business of Me, Inc.” (Iralma) and what mindset is needed for “My Job, LLC” (Jo). 

It’s YOUR LIFE. It’s time to run YOUR SHOW! 

Big tech has brought with it an obsession to make money as efficiently as possible without regard to the ethical impact on individuals and society as a whole. 

The authors of the 2021 book, System Error, believe the problem with big tech is that innovations are solely designed by technologists, funded by freewheeling venture capitalists, with little regulatory oversight – a formula for the long list of negative impacts of unbridled high tech.  And the big tech ethical dilemma is getting worse day by day.

So, what are some solutions? 

Gain a better understanding, through the eyes of Silicone Valley insiders (and System Error authors), of some alternatives to lessen the negative impact and achieve a better, more positive impact of technology.

Have you been wondering who all really was “short on ethics” when it comes to the 2007-2008 financial crisis?

Well, join Kelly and I on October 19th as we dissect all the “players” in the crisis – from the homeowners, the underwriters, the loan officers, the wall-street bankers, the rating agencies, to the regulators… we will discuss all the roles portrayed in both book (2010) and movie (2015) form.

The Big Short is a 2015 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Adam McKay. Written by McKay and Charles Randolph, it is based on the 2010 book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis showing how the financial crisis of 2007–2008 was triggered by the United States housing bubble. The film stars Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt.

Have you been wondering what REALLY happened behind the scenes at wework over the past decade? 

Well, Kelly and I were too. So we set out to find out what exactly happened to the “unicorn” start-up after it’s conception in 2010. And to dissect all the behavior of the players involved…

From co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer, Adam Neumann, to his wife – Rebekah Neamann (the cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow)…

From co-founder and former Chief Culture Officer, Miguel McKelvey to SoftBank Group’s founder, Masayoshi Son… and all the investors at Benchmark, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co, T. Rowe Price, Wellington Management, Goldman Sachs Group, and more, along the way…

What exactly was the mentality that kept the valuation of the glorified real estate business growing over the years? Why were analysts that saw through the numbers not listened to?

Was it lack of competence or simple ignorance? OR, was it that society has the tendency to let charisma override ethics?

Join Kelly Paxton, CFE, PI and myself on September 15th and find out!

Adam Grant is an American psychologist (Ph.D. U of Michigan), professor at Penn (Wharton), author of five books (millions sold), recipient of many teaching awards and Fortune’s 40 under 40 award, speaker (many TED talks), and host of a popular podcast (WorkLife with Adam).

Grant’s books are all about work and personal success. His most recent book, Think Again, focuses on factors for success in the rapidly changing world – the ability to rethink and unlearn.

He examines the “critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions, and open other people’s minds.” Grant explores the “joy of being wrong,” points out the value of associating with those who challenge our thoughts, and importance of searching for the truth like scientists.

In other words, we are better off “knowing what we don’t know” (the subtitle of the book). So get ready to “THINK AGAIN” in this CPE Book Club event!

Are you ready to hear from THE AUTHOR HERSELF how to DETECT, PREVENT, and INVESTIGATE Pink Collar Crime based on her book: Embezzlement?

Here’s the scoop on the book, directly from Kelly:

Your most trusted employee. Your right hand. However, something just doesn’t feel right about your business. Could an employee be stealing from you? Certainly you’re mistaken, right?

After all, this person helped you grow your business, has full access to everything from passwords to bank statements. Sure, that gives your employee the opportunity, but he or she would never take advantage of it. We lock our cars and our houses to protect ourselves. What do you do to protect your business?

Kelly’s book is designed to help you prevent, detect, and investigate embezzlement. Yes. That embezzlement that you DON’T THINK WILL HAPPEN TO YOU!

Kelly Paxton is a former federal agent who was used to dealing with “bad guys.” Once she started working embezzlement cases, she quickly realized that honest people steal. So, arm yourself with her knowledge, insight, and tips on how to protect your future today.

Are you ready to hear from THE AUTHOR HIMSELF how to GET, ASK, & PERFORM? Join us for this webinar featuring Robert Berry, That Audit Guy, and his latest book:

Ask, Get, Perform: The Auditors Essential Guide to Asking Better Questions, Getting Better Answers, and Performing Better Audits.

Per Robert – if you cannot master the art of asking questions while auditing, your career is over. Scary, huh? But so true. And his refreshingly entertaining book and his refreshingly entertaining personality is about to show us just how true that is. This webinar is going to be the ultimate resource for teaching auditors to ask better questions.

The book contains four in depth chapters to help you increase the quality of your questions, including:

• 3 Concerns With Questions
• 5 Elements For Quality Questions
• 4 Types of Questions For Your Toolkit
• 7 Questions For Successful Audit Report Issues
• And the
• 5 Step Approach To Quality Questioning

The whole point of strategic planning is to try to predict the future. It’s about developing plans to anticipate and meet needs of customers in the future. And part of the process is to anticipate and take advantage of opportunities as well as anticipate and avoid risks.

The risk part is particularly important to internal auditors since at least part of our charters as auditors is to assess and mitigate risks. (Should be a bigger part, if you ask me!)

Rita McGrath, best-selling author and longtime professor at Columbia Business School, has recently written a book titled, Seeing Around Corners. McGrath is known as an expert on innovation and growth and, in the book, discusses “inflection points” and how to see them before they happen in order to have an advantage in planning for the future and avoiding and dealing with all types of risks to the business. McGrath contends that future changes don’t happen over night and can be anticipated. Join this webinar to see HOW!

This is a preview of Jo’s latest book, published in December 2020!

Becoming The Everyday Ethicist: Doing Things the Right Way the First Time provides the keys to living an ethical life, shows leaders how to display integrity and earn trust, and demonstrates the importance of ethics (and ethics monitoring by Internal Auditors) in all organizations.

This webinar will be a preview of the book’s main parts:

• Personal Ethics (The Everyday Ethicist™)
• Leadership Ethics (The Everyday Ethical Leader)
• Organizational Ethics (The Everyday Ethical Organization)
• PLUS a preview of Total Ethical Auditing™

Sure seems like now is a good time for a dose of happiness…

Two of my favorite books approach the subject of happiness from quite different perspectives.

Shawn Achor’s bestselling book, The Happiness Advantage, approaches happiness from a behavioral psychology perspective, specifically positive psychology.  Achor has interesting data regarding the positive connection between happiness and success.

Sissela Bok, the renowned American philosopher, in her book Exploring Happiness, makes the ever important connection between ethics and happiness – pursuing happiness while doing what is right.

I believe we are all in search of a bit of happiness, particularly now when we are in the midst of a triple pandemic – social, economic, and health. This webinar will provides some timely, practical tips that we all can use.

Did you know the movie Psycho is a story of an embezzler? 

From past to present – from fact to fiction – from movies, to podcasts, to books – get ready to dive in to all things “Fraud and Pop Culture” with Kelly and Jo! You will leave this event with a list of new fraud cases, stories, and resources – some that we guarantee you haven’t ever heard of before!

Here’s just a quick sneak peak of some of the characters we will be discussing:

• Elizabeth Holmes
• Billy McFarland
• Anna Delvey
• Anthony Gignac
• Jerome Jacobson
• Martin Shkreli
• Kate McClure, Mark D’Amico, Johnny Bobbit
• And MORE!

PLUS, you will get a CPE credit in Specialized Knowledge: FRAUD!

Ready to see if you are “honestly dishonest?”

I am so excited to have my dear friend and collaborator, Kelly Paxton, CFE, PI and the “Pink Collar Crime Expert” (follow her on LI here and be sure to watch the hashtag #pinkcollarcrime) as a guest speaker for our next CPE Book Club!

Kelly’s is about to change your ideas of how honest people behave. Using behavioral economics and neuroscience this webinar will have you rethinking what you thought you knew about people… and perhaps even what you thought you knew about YOURSELF!

Specifically, we will be covering Dan Ariely’s excellent book: The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves.

Trust us, you don’t want to miss this one!

PLUS, you will get a CPE credit in Behavioral Ethics!

By far, one of the best books I read in 2019… Winners Never Cheat: edition 1 subtitle “Everyday Values We Learned as Children (But May Have Forgotten) OR edition 2 subtitle “Even in Difficult Times”, by Jon M. Huntsman. 

Couple this with two other great reads: There’s No Such Thing As Business Ethics: There’s Only One Rule For Making Decisions (by John C. Maxwell) and The Power of Ethical Management (by Kenneth Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale)… and what you have is one AMAZING Ethics course.

Ethics, Respect, Honestly, Integrity. It’s time to focus on these words and ensure we “never cheat our ethics.”

Have a “growth mindset” — we hear it all the time, but what does it REALLY mean? Joshua Moore and Helen Glasgow, a life coach and personal growth researcher, wrote the book on the subject. Literally. The Growth Mindset: A Guide to Professional and Personal Growth is the perfect read on this topic. I can’t wait to share it with you, along with someone you already know we love to cover in our book club…

Malcolm Gladwell is the best selling author of Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference; Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking; and Outliers: The Story of Success. All his works deal with research in the areas of psychology and sociology and unexpected implications for individuals. The Tipping Point deals with critical mass; Blink deals with how people can make informed decisions rapidly; and Outliers deals with how the environment as well as personal drive and motivation contribute to success.

YOU ARE HERE. Let’s talk about where you want to be next. Let’s write your script for success.

Just like the subject of self-help, everyone has an opinion on effective leadership. And, countless books and articles have been written on the subject. Sorting through the meaningful and “not so much” is actually quite easy.

There are a few individuals that stand out for their decades of practical experience, thoughtfulness, research, and writing regarding effective leadership…

Warren Bennis, Peter Drucker, John Bogle, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Bill George, just to name a few.

You will leave this webinar knowing exactly what you need to start impacting and inspiring those you lead.

We are WELL into 2020. How is the “new year’s resolution” coming? I am guessing that it may or may not be working. So I have a proposal for you – focus less on your resolution itself (the goal) and focus more on your habits in order to reach that resolution.

In this webinar we are going to explore 3 words that you need to fully embrace when it comes to your habits: POWER. IDENTITY. NOW.

Based on three of the best books on habits out there: The Power of Habit (Duhigg), Atomic Habits (Clear) and The Now Habit (Fiore) – I am going to share with you how you can still make 2020 your best year yet. 

THE FUTURE IS YOURS TO CREATE. Let’s start now.

Most people (including the experts) don’t read strangers well.  It’s time we take nothing for granted when talking to strangers. Or maybe anyone. Seriously, I think these books should be mandatory study for professionals working in fraud detection in any form, including auditors.

As much of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book Talking to Strangers: What we should know about the people we don’t know was actually based on the research of Timothy Levine, and described in detail in his book: Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception – I decided you needed to hear about BOTH book!

If you don’t know, Malcolm Gladwell is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Outliers, Blink, and The Tipping Point – which we reviewed last year on the CPE Book Club webinars.  Timothy R. Levine – is a Professor and Prolific Researcher.