Free CFE- Fraud-Investigations-and-Legal-Issues ACFE Updates

The Fraud Examiners Manual states:

“Duplicate testing is used to identify transactions with duplicate values in specified fields … fields such as cheque numbers, invoice numbers, and government identification numbers … searching for duplicates within these fields can help the fraud examiner find anomalies that merit further examination”.

This directly addresses Tony’s need to ensure no two invoices have the same number.

According to the ACFE Fraud Examiners Manual, Law Section, particularly in the Money Laundering chapter discussing International Anti-Money Laundering Efforts and the FATF Recommendations , financial institutions are required to file suspicious transaction reports STRs when they suspect that funds are the proceeds of criminal activity or are related to money laundering or terrorist financing.

The conduct described—purchasing bearer instruments with cash in amounts just below mandatory reporting thresholds—is commonly known as structuring. Structuring is a recognized money laundering technique designed to evade currency transaction reporting requirements. Under the FATF Recommendations, financial institutions must not rely solely on monetary thresholds to trigger reporting obligations. Instead, they are required to file a suspicious transaction report whenever there is reasonable suspicion of illicit activity, regardless of the amount involved.

A cash transaction report is typically triggered by transactions exceeding a specific monetary threshold, but structuring to avoid that threshold does not eliminate the reporting obligation. If employees suspect money laundering, the bank is obligated to file a suspicious transaction report with the appropriate authorities.

Therefore, the correct answer is that the bank is required to file a report of suspicious transactions because the employees suspect money laundering violations.

Data quality is important on both the inbound and outbound sides of any data transfer. Fraud examiners must ensure that the data received are complete, readable, accurate, and appropriate for the requested period and fields. They should also consider control totals, missing records, formatting issues, and whether the transfer process affected integrity. Option A is incorrect because many jurisdictions have data privacy laws governing collection, storage, disclosure, and transfer of personal data. Option B is wrong because interoperability matters even when a data sharing agreement exists; the receiving party must be able to read and use the data. Option C is not a necessary feature of every data sharing agreement. The best statement is that data quality must be ensured throughout the transfer.

The most likely claim is violation of the duty of care. Directors and officers generally owe fiduciary duties to act with reasonable care, diligence, and prudence in managing corporate affairs. Willa’s problem is inattentiveness: she fell behind on her board duties, and her failure to act likely allowed preventable shareholder losses. That fact pattern concerns failure to exercise adequate oversight and care. The duty of loyalty involves acting in the organization’s best interests and avoiding self-dealing, conflicts of interest, or improper personal benefit. The facts do not indicate that Willa acted for personal gain or against ACME’s interests intentionally. “Duty of transparency” and “duty of responsibility” are not the best fiduciary theories described here. Therefore, option B is correct.