AML CHALLENGES
police shows on TV. Those scenarios are all
individual building blocks in reading body
language and no one or two items is proof
of anything. Furthermore, if you are at the
point that you are actually interviewing a
subject and trying to read his body language,
then you probably have already encountered
a loss and are merely in reactive mode. The
concept here is to try to recognize a certain
profile as a possible problematic situation
prior to having to circle the wagons and clean
up the mess.
Due diligence, particularly at the onset of any
employment relationship is essential and can
save your company a lot of grief if you have
a solid “know your employee” policy. That
being said, unfortunately, it may not do much
for you in the area of white-collar crimes, as
historically, the wrongdoers will not have
a criminal record. This could be for several
reasons such as, the subject was never prosecuted, the subject was never caught or
previous institutions swept it under the rug.
Pick one, but the bottom line is, it is your
problem now.
Let us discuss the atmosphere for a whitecollar crime to occur. Usually there are three
factors.
1. A generous supply of inspired and potential wrongdoers
2. A target rich environment
3. The lack of oversight or ineffective control
systems and/or policies
Focusing on the last category, which is the
only one that you have very much control
over, it might be time for an honest review
and analysis of your own systems. As far as
the potential for an employee to turn to the
dark side, it should be an institution’s responsibility to understand situations and outside
influences that might contribute or push an
employee in the direction of committing
a crime. I will refer to this as “Continue to
Know Your Employee.”
not to report an event because of the concern
to their reputation and the damage that
might occur. No one wants to see the name
of their institution on the front pages of The
New York Times for embarrassing indiscretions. To compound that matter, an employee
that might be exposed by the institution is
released (without police intervention) only to
resurface at the institution across the street
ready to resume the same criminal behavior.
Now that we have established a semi-solid
framework for what a white-collar crime
is, let us discuss the concept of predictive
forecasting.
“He’s lying when he looks down and to the
left,” or “He’s got sweaty palms in a cool
office,” or “Watch him fidget, he must be
nervous about his guilt.” I am sure you
have all heard statements like that, especially if you watch some of those ridiculous
Certainly there are differences between
wrongdoers with low self-control who
respond to an opportunistic event, people
who commit a crime to satisfy their own ego
and those who do it depending upon their
personal state of affairs. Examples of outside
influences: Spouse laid off, kids’ college
tuition, gambling, drug and/or alcohol issues,
divorce and health concerns.
With the bad economy and 401K’s becoming
201K’s, bonuses out the window, cutbacks
in overtime and generally asking employees
to do more for less, that could certainly
ACAMS.ORG | MARCH–MAY 2011 | ACAMS TODAY
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