Presenter: Daniel G. Porter, CFE

Speaker Bio: Daniel Porter has been a Certified Fraud Examiner for over 20 years and has conducted and managed civil and criminal investigations for over 25 years as a licensed private investigator, a loss prevention manager, and as an investigator with the State of Tennessee.  He currently provides training and consulting services in the areas of ethics and fraud prevention-detection-investigation. He is a guest lecturer at Middle Tennessee State University and the Vanderbilt University School of Law.

Title:  When You Hear Hoofbeats, I May Be A Zebra - Fraud Case Study

Description: This session uses case studies to explore some of the more common symptoms of fraud that are often misdiagnosed.

Young doctors sometimes arrive at an exotic medical diagnosis (You’ve got Kuru!), when a more commonplace explanation is likely (You’ve got a cold).  These diagnoses are known as Zebras and doctors are taught, “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras”.  Sometimes, the patient really has a rare disease and suffers from misdiagnosis and subsequent improper treatment. Similarly, managers, auditors, and investigators often see indicators of fraud but dismiss them because they’ve been taught or assume, based on experience, that it is just a mistake that looks like fraud.