N.Y. Town Officials Accused of Bond Fraud

The deputy finance director of Ramapo, N.Y., and three other town officials “cooked the books” of the New York suburb to hide the true state of its finances from municipal bond investors, federal authorities have alleged.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said the officials resorted to a...

By Matthew Heller • April 15, 2016

When Enterprise Risk Management Gets Strategic

Imagine this scenario. Your company was led by its external auditors several years ago to put in place an enterprise risk management (ERM) program. Its implementation has progressed at a slower pace than you’d expected, mostly because your operational managers perceive ERM to be just another comp...

By John Bugalla and Emanuel Lauria • April 15, 2016

Supply Chain Anti-Fraud Measures Lacking

A large percentage of companies continue to experience supply chain fraud and many of those may not be doing enough to address the problem, according to a new survey by Deloitte.The consulting firm polled more than 2,600 professionals, finding that for a third consecutive year about 30% of them s...

By Matthew Heller • April 5, 2016

IRS Still Has ‘Significant’ Flaws in Data Security

The IRS has made progress in improving information security, but significant deficiencies remain in its systems for protecting sensitive taxpayer and financial data, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.Among the continuing information security weaknesses cited by the...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • April 4, 2016

Regulator Bars Valeant Officers From Trading

Canadian regulators have ordered top executives and directors of Valeant Pharmaceuticals not to trade in its stock until the troubled drug maker files its annual financial statements for 2015.The order by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers is in place for 15 days. It technically applies only to...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • April 1, 2016

Biotech CFO Accused of Misleading Investors

The former CFO and two other former top executives of biotech company Aveo Pharmaceuticals have been charged with failing to disclose the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had serious concerns about its experimental kidney cancer drug.The Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that Aveo ...

By Matthew Heller • March 30, 2016

U.S. Charges Iranians with Cyberattacks Against Banks, Dam

The U.S. government has charged seven Iranians with conducting a coordinated campaign of cyberattacks against U.S. banks and a New York dam on behalf of the Iran governmentThe U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan announced an indictment charging seven Iranians employed by two Iran-based computer c...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • March 24, 2016

Special Report: Insurance at Risk

The property-casualty insurance industry is sitting on a ton of surplus capital. From most perspectives, it’s hard to see that as a negative. For one thing, it is protection against the effects of a severe economic downturn on the industry; for another, a healthy industry can attract equity and b...

By David Katz • March 23, 2016

Predictive Modeling Can Make Insurers Better Risk Managers

The explosion of big data has given every professional services organization reason to evaluate how digital information affects their business. The challenges faced by the insurance industry are no different than any other, as companies continue to evolve their approach to generating, storing, an...

By Loren Trimble and Michael Kim • March 23, 2016

Property-Casualty Megatrends: An Insurance Primer

Most CFOs have experienced the “insurance cycle.” It’s the movement of property-casualty insurance conditions from “hard” (relatively higher prices) to “soft” (lower prices), and back again.Cycles are typically observed over a period of years, as insurers ponder annual renewals of the past year’s...

By Rick Gorvett • March 23, 2016

Compliance Function Losing Access to CEOs

While corporate demands for compliance support have been increasing, the stature of the compliance function within organizations is declining, according to a new survey from Accenture.Of the more than 150 compliance officers that the consulting firm polled for its 2016 Compliance Risk Study, 31% ...

By Matthew Heller • March 17, 2016

U.S. Man Accused of Jamaican Bridge Loan Scam

The former chairman of a Jamaican call center company has been charged with operating a $10 million Ponzi scheme in which he allegedly conned investors, including three of his own relatives, by telling them they would be funding “bridge loans” to Jamaican businesses.Mark A. Jones told investors t...

By Matthew Heller • March 16, 2016

Verizon Fined $1.3M Over Use of ‘Supercookies’

Verizon Wireless has agreed to pay $1.35 million to settle charges that it violated consumers’ privacy by inserting powerful tracking code into their web browsing to deliver targeted ads for marketers.The Federal Communications Commission said Monday that Verizon began using Unique Identifier Hea...

By Matthew Heller • March 7, 2016

Cell Phone Fraud: Who’s Watching IT?

According to the Federal Communications Commission, upwards of 40% of theft in major U.S. cities involves personal cell phones. But less talked about is the hidden threat of cell phone theft that takes place in the workplace.Jesse Daves Cell phone procurement fraud has been on the rise in recent ...

By Jesse Daves and Celyna Frost • March 4, 2016

Facebook Facing German Competition Law Probe

Germany’s competition watchdog is investigating whether Facebook is abusing its market dominance by failing to adequately inform consumers about the data it collects from them.The social network’s terms and conditions ask users for permission to use their data for advertising purposes but accordi...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • March 3, 2016

Olympus Fined $623M Over Bribery Scheme

Olympus Corp. of the Americas has agreed to pay $623 million to settle charges it bribed doctors and hospitals to buy its medical devices as part of a scheme that generated more than $600 million in sales.The settlement announced Tuesday resolves both criminal and civil claims and is the largest ...

By Matthew Heller • March 2, 2016

Crime Doesn’t Pay, Says Harvard Bribery Study

After a year in which Department of Justice prosecutions for foreign corrupt business practices fell to their lowest level in nearly a decade, the department is vowing to step up the pace in 2016. And corporate managers who take that pledge seriously have additional reason to intensify anticorrup...

By David McCann • March 1, 2016

A Tool to Build a Cyber Defense

Corporate leadership must be involved in managing and guiding the direction of a company’s defense against cyber threats. Cybersecurity is not just an information technology responsibility, and finance chiefs should be prepared to partner with the chief information officer in the planning and ove...

By Patrick Morin • Feb. 24, 2016

Special Report: Managing Cyber Risk

When President Obama signed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 late last year, the outlines of a new, highly complex relationship among corporations and federal and state governments began to emerge around the issue of how the public and private sectors would interact to manage cyb...

By David Katz • Feb. 24, 2016

Apple, FBI Face off Over Access to Killer’s iPhone

Apple said Wednesday that a court order requiring it to help the FBI break into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino mass shooters represents an “unprecedented” threat to the security of its customers.Syed Farook’s iPhone is protected by a feature that automatically wipes it clean of all its d...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 17, 2016

Harman Tax Exec Accused of Insider Trading

A senior tax executive at Harman International Industries has been charged with making more than $130,000 in illicit profits by trading on his advance knowledge of the electronics company’s earnings.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Dennis Hamilton, Harman’s vice president of tax, ...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 8, 2016

Cyber Ratings Services Can Help Thwart Hackers

We learn about data breaches almost every day, and the first-line victims range from large, seemingly sophisticated companies to the local dentist’s office. Our ability to assess and understand a company’s cyber hygiene has been fairly limited, so knowing who’s safe has been a guessing game — unt...

By Craig Callé • Feb. 8, 2016

Barclays, Credit Suisse Fined $154M Over Dark Pools

Barclays and Credit Suisse have agreed to pay a combined $154 million to settle charges that they failed to exclude high-frequency traders from their “dark pool” alternative trading systems.The settlements are with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York attorney general’s of...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 2, 2016

SAP Fined $3.7M Over Panama Bribery Scheme

Software vendor SAP SE has agreed to pay $3.7 million to settle charges relating to the bribery of a Panamanian government official to obtain government sales contracts.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday that deficiencies in SAP’s internal controls enabled Vicente Garcia, its...

By Matthew Heller • Feb. 1, 2016

U.S. Opens up Cuba to Export Financing

In the latest round of measures to open doors to trade between the U.S. and Canada, the Obama administration has lifted restrictions on American financing of exports to the island nation.The revised rules, which took effect on Wednesday, allow U.S. banks to provide direct financing for the export...

By Matthew Heller • Jan. 27, 2016