The Walden Pond Vincent Walden

Host Vincent Walden goes solo as he shares his story of changing careers and discusses the direction he plans to take his new company in. Vincent is using his 20+ years as a legal, compliance and investigation technology innovation expert to lead Kona AI as its new CEO. Kona AI is the most innovative, AI-driven, cost effective and easy-to-use compliance and anti-fraud technology solution to mid and large companies on the market.

In the last months of his role as Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, he came to the realization that the Kona AI platform, which they had been using to help companies find improper payments, needed to be scaled. Now, he and his colleague Matt Galvin are collaborating with MIT to build an algorithm-sharing consortium of leading companies.

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To learn more, and contact Vincent Walden, please visit Kona AI

Andi McNeal is Vice President of Research with the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, a membership association serving more than 90,000 anti-fraud professionals globally. As a CFE, she specializes in fraud prevention, detection and investigation, education and training, research and analysis, corporate culture and leadership, and association management. Andi discusses the ACFE’s 2022 Report to the Nations and its insights on occupational fraud. Download the report here!

The ACFE’s study focuses on occupational fraud, Andi shares. They were not attempting to get a snapshot of every type of fraud that occurs - only cases perpetrated by employees against the organizations they worked for, specifically between 2020 and 2021. In the 2100 cases they observed, over $3.6 billion was calculated in losses, which is just a small portion of the fraud committed globally. Fraud isn’t an accounting problem, it’s a human problem. 

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Andi McNeal on LinkedIn 

To learn more, and contact Vincent Walden, please visit Alvarez and Marsal

Marta Cadavid is co-founder and CEO at NoFraud, an organization dedicated to fighting fraud by using technology to anticipate criminal behavior. NoFraud specializes in forensic audit, cybersecurity, and investigations of economic crimes. As a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS), Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), AML Anti-Money Laundering Certified Associate (AMLCA), Marta possesses valuable experience that sets her a cut above the rest. She is also Consultant and International Coach of Auditool. Marta discusses how fraud triangle theory can be used to improve fraud detection.

Fraud, corruption, waste, corporate abuse and other misbehaviors destroy an organization’s value. They are the silent enemy that kills companies, Marta shares. This enemy was the driving force behind the conception of NoFraud; their goal was to be one step ahead of these misbehaviors. They now help corporations build value through the prediction, prevention, and detection of undesirable conduct at the workplace.

According to Marta’s research, 15-25% of people are never involved in unethical actions. Unfortunately, the larger percentage of people are prone to behaving according to the moment. NoFraud combines fraud triangle theory with artificial intelligence, data analytics and semantics to monitor patterns of keystrokes or communications from an individual. 

Resources
Marta Cadavid on LinkedIn
Email: marta.cadavid.a@gmail.com 
NoFraud.la | MartaCadavid.com

To learn more, and contact Vincent Walden, please visit Alvarez and Marsal

Margot Cella is a research and public policy analyst, and Vice President of Research and Anti-Fraud Initiatives at the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ). The CAQ is dedicated to enhancing investor confidence and public trust in the global capital markets. Margot shares how the CAQ is intersecting the accounting and legal compliance professions to improve corporate culture and financial reporting.

The CAQ was founded post-Sarbanes-Oxley era by the largest accounting firms, who thought it was necessary to have an organization to serve as the voice of the profession. As a non-partisan, public policy organization, the CAQ frequently works with the PCAOB and the SEC. A notable initiative they carry out is convening capital market stakeholders to advance the discussions of critical issues affecting either audit quality or public company reporting.[4:08]

One thing that should be recognized is that professionals in finance are skilled with data, processes and controls. They are always innovating ways to build systems that detect or monitor enterprise and fraud risks, and raise a red flag when something goes beyond what should be a normal transaction or activity. Compliance professionals should be part of these conversations, as their work is impacted by these systems.
 
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Margot Cella on LinkedIn
AntiFraudCollaboration.org

To learn more, and contact Vincent Walden, please visit Alvarez and Marsal 

Malcolm Wright is the founder of InnoFi Advisory. As a former Chief Compliance Officer at a large cryptocurrency exchange, Malcolm now advises companies on ensuring responsible innovation in digital finance. All companies, and their compliance officers, need to be familiar with cryptocurrencies and the trend towards decentralized finance. Malcolm describes how current compliance concepts such as “Compliance by Design” and “Know Your Customer (KYC)” are still applicable in the crypto space and gives practical advice to legal and compliance professionals on how to navigate in the crypto future. 

The year 2021 brought with it an explosion of different non-fungible tokens (NFTs) used for funding projects of all shapes and sizes, which often happens in decentralized finance where the whole ecosystem is run by smart contracts - automated contracts driven by code. Having an NFT is basically a digital certificate of provenance. The emergence of these NFTs and their uses has heralded the creator economy, and will revolutionize the way culture, finance, and our societies work.

For the last few years in crypto, there has been significant focus on centralized exchanges and custodians, but recently focus has shifted towards other areas of risk. At InnoFi, they consider how risks can present themselves not only from an anti-money-laundering perspective, but also a consumer protection perspective. 

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Malcolm Wright on LinkedIn

To learn more, and contact Vincent Walden, please visit Alvarez and Marsal 

Chian Boen is Senior Manager with Johnson & Johnson’s Global Audit & Assurance Group. He is experienced in government and AML investigations, law enforcement, and forensic accounting. He joins Vince Walden to discuss Johnson & Johnson’s strategy for data-driven assurance.

Two of the things Chian relies the most on to help him conduct anti-corruption audits and investigations are his team and heavy analytics. If you’re not using certain analytics tools, such as Tableau data visualization, you’re not leveraging as much as you can in terms of investigations. As for investigations, while it is always great to have face-to-face conversations, software like Zoom and Microsoft make things more flexible, as you can use resources on-screen to help you identify body language tells. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated innovation and technology, Vince says. People were forced to adapt and improve in such a short time that everything progressed at a much faster pace than it would have otherwise.