Forensic Accountants: directory of firms

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners awards the Certified Fraud Examiner credential. Eligibility runs on a qualifying point system that credits education and fraud-related experience, and certification requires at least two years of professional experience in a field directly or indirectly related to the detection or deterrence of fraud. The examination covers three areas: fraud schemes and financial crimes, fraud investigations and legal issues, and fraud prevention and deterrence.

CFEs must agree to abide by the ACFE bylaws and Code of Professional Ethics, and maintain the credential with a minimum of twenty continuing professional education credits each annual compliance period, at least ten of them relating directly to the detection and deterrence of fraud and two to ethics.

The AICPA grants the Certified in Financial Forensics credential to its members in good standing who hold a CPA credential and meet its requirements. It marks work in areas such as bankruptcy and insolvency, litigation support and family law services. Since it is anchored to a CPA credential, the state board licence check still applies underneath it.

It begins before anyone is interviewed. Access is quietly reviewed, relevant systems and mailboxes are preserved, and the scope is defined with counsel: what is alleged, over what period, and what a finding would need to look like to be usable.

Then comes the analytical phase. Bank and card statements, the accounting ledger, vendor master files, payroll registers and system logs are pulled together and tested against each other. The pattern usually emerges from mismatches rather than from a single transaction: a vendor address that matches an employee's, a payment run outside the usual cycle, journal entries posted after a close.

Interviews come late, in a planned order, once the documentary picture is firm enough that answers can be tested. The engagement ends with a written report setting out what was examined, what was found, what could not be determined, and the basis for each conclusion. A report that overstates certainty is worse than no report at all.

In federal court, expert testimony is admitted under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. The rule requires the party offering the expert to demonstrate to the court that it is more likely than not that the specialised knowledge will help the trier of fact, that the testimony rests on sufficient facts or data, that it is the product of reliable principles and methods, and that the expert's opinion reflects a reliable application of those principles and methods to the facts of the case.

That framing has practical consequences for how an engagement is run. Methods have to be ones the expert can name and defend, working papers have to show how each conclusion was reached, and assumptions have to be stated rather than buried in a spreadsheet.

It also means an expert who has already published a firm conclusion before the analysis is complete is a liability. State courts apply their own admissibility standards, so where the matter will be heard is a question to settle early.