Interviews are the critical part of every internal investigation.  Before conducting any interviews, it is important for the investigator to know as much as possible about the events under investigation.  Such knowledge can come from documents, emails, financial audits, forensic studies and any other information.  Practitioners know that interviews should be conducted in reverse order – meaning from least important to most important.  The more...

Decisions by the Supreme Court provide compelling reasons for employers to perform investigations.  A good investigation can protect your organization, while a bad one can become an employee relations fiasco.  If companies follow the proper process, companies should end up making the “right” decision. Typically, “routine” internal investigations focus on day-to-day matters: Accounting fraud Theft of physical assets Unauthorized access to data (manipulation or sale)...

This is the first of four postings on internal investigations.  The focus of these postings is not the high-profile internal investigations which are regularly disclosed to the SEC or reported in the press.  Instead, I am focusing on “routine” or day-to-day internal investigations which are conducted to handle a variety of issues.  The art of day-to-day internal investigations has been ignored in favor of media...

Healthcare fraudsters do not discriminate between private and public medical insurance.  Fraudsters use similar schemes to defraud Medicare and Medicaid and private insurance companies.  Most healthcare providers bill public and private payers.  For example, a health care provider may be billing Medicare, Medicaid and several private health plans (in-network and out-of-network).  Private insurance companies also provide insurance as Medicare Parts C and D contractors or...

I find the so-called “vampire” cultural phenomena scary – I do not understand what is so entertaining about “ordinary” people who can suddenly turn into vampires, let alone enter into “serious” relationships with each other or with so-called “normal” humans. Maybe I am stuck in the past when “Night of the Living Dead” was more my cup of tea.  Whatever your attitude toward death and...