How it all Started: The Life of a Fortune 500 Fraud Auditor

I had a very difficult time finding a job out of college after 9/11, when MBAs couldn't even find work and the economy was extremely bad. I thought my degree in International Business would carry me to the far ends of the Earth, dealing with European and Japanese businesses, and my specialty was in the customs of Japanese business, and in the Japanese language (I had taken the Japanese language and tea ceremony in college for 3 years). Much of Japanese business is conducted via tea ceremonies, and is very cultural, and is very detailed in how business is done through very cultural methods there. It always fascinated me, and now I knew how to do it. But, God had a different plan I guess, and the road took me down the path of corporate fraud, executive white collar fraud. The only position I could find was a contract position with Honeywell International, as a travel and expense auditor. I had no idea until after starting the position, that it involved building their preventative travel and expense program, and that what I would build, would start to identify internal fraud at all levels within the company, that I would be a part of investigations with former law enforcement officers who made up the Corporate Security Department, who packed guns in their cars in case an investigation got “out of hand,” and that I would be feeding them the info they needed to prosecute and find fraudulent employees; I ultimately would be responsible for the firing of several of these executives, as it was my job to find which ones were fraudulent. How do you prepare for a position like this straight out of college, at age 22?! I guess its a good thing I didn't know what I was getting into initially, because I probably wouldn't have taken this position if I had known!

I was the sole fraud auditor for Honeywell for the time being until more were hired because of the program I built. I was told that there was potentially $250 million dollars in fraudulent miscellaneous spend, and they couldn't identify where it was, and it was my job to find it. Boy, they don't prepare you for this in college! How was I to identify the fraud in $250 million dollars in potential miscellaneous expenses?....This is the story in how I did it, and is an accounting of the fraudulent executives I encountered, and how we took them down...and my path over the past 10 years in trying to keep various Fortune 500 companies ethically clean, and freed from unethical employees like the ones who were caught...

You have no idea what goes on until you are in the inside:)!........

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