financial fraud
{money}
Into
Battle!
Computer forensics grows in importance
in the fight against financial fraud
By Rakis Christoforou BBA, CPA, ABV, CFF, CGMA, ACFE
D
uring the last two
decades there has
been significant
growth in the
use of computers, the Internet,
e-mail, and mobile phones in criminal activities including
Financial Fraud. In their struggle to uncover
such fraud, forensic accountants and computer forensic experts now look not only at
paperwork but also at electronic evidence,
commonly known as e-evidence. Computer
forensics has evolved as the main tool for the
discovery of Electronic Stored Information
(ESI).
When investigations were restricted to paper evidence, forensic accountants and lawyers would ask for and received truckloads of
documents. Their strategy involved finding
evidential matter in the form of paperwork
that would help them prove a matter of
fact. The strategy has not changed much
since then but the nature of the evidence
has. These days the amount of e-evidence
would fill supertankers if it were to be printed
because so many more transactions are computerized. Moreover, computers and other
electronic devices at work are used for personal purposes as well and, therefore, much
more information is stored electronically than
it used to be on paper.
In today’s digital world, fraudsters leave
digital footprints of their activities which
reveal their actions and intentions. Digital
evidence comes in many forms, including
the hard drives found in personal computers, external drives, telephones, smart-
Fraudsters leave digital
footprints of their
activities which reveal
their actions
and intentions
phones, personal data assistants,
surveillance cameras and telephone
voicemail systems.
The amount of information left on each
of the above devices has often provided sufficient evidence to catch and convict financial fraudsters and other criminals, many of
whom attempt to destroy their digital trails
by deleting the relevant files. In fact, “delet-
70 Gold the international investment, finance & professional services magazine of cyprus
ing” is a misnomer. Choosing the delete
option may erase a file’s reference from the
directory but it does not erase the file until
it is overwritten [