Jun 1, 2023
In Sound Business Insights Episode 32 - Business Fraud Dan Watkins discusses five areas of business-related fraud as well as remedies and real-life stories to illustrate appropriate examples of this complex topic.
The five types of fraud we will cover are:
Consumer Fraud
Business Fraud / Unfair Competition
Business Partner Fraud / Shareholder Fraud
Sale of Business Fraud
Criminal Fraud (Note: the Watkins Firm handles Civil Litigation)
In Sound Business Insights Episode 32 - Business Fraud Dan discusses the elements of fraud as they relate to the five separate aspects of fraud from a business perspective. Dan discusses how he has witnessed one company take the products of another company, relabel them and then resell them. Another example is the company who appears to be bankrupt and is closed and then six months later a couple of investors in that closed company notice their friends and co-investors are now driving new expensive cars and living in large homes. How did this happen? The answer is 3 of the former owners hid the success, closed the company, took the product overseas, set up a new company under a new brand and were making millions.
Dan shares another example where a group of companies are under a national umbrella and the accountant for the national entity decides to perpetrate a fraud across a period of several years. If a group expense of, say $5000, came in (and should be divided equally between the 9 sub-companies) the account would charge each $5,000 and pocket the difference. What outcome was Dan able to achieve for our client? You'll have to listen to the podcast to find out!
Sound Business Insights Episode 32 - Business Fraud closes with examples of how fraudsters use the sale of a company or the acquisition of a business to commit fraud. This inclueds the example of how a merger is a common strategy to water down or eliminate the interests of minority shareholders.