Fraud Conference

It's a lovely night in Boston, a perfect night to kick off a conference – in this case the annual Fraud Conference hosted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. About 2,000 people are attending this year's event, which seems to have pleased the ACFE's staff.

Tonight was all about a soft introduction to the conference. The exhibit hall was open and fortified with four open bars, at least two hors d'oeuvre and one dessert table, and several hundred people wandering about and catching up with each other.

"Unfortunately, it's a good time to be a fraud examiner," one person remarked. Aside from the increased focus corporate fraud is receiving from authorities for reasons ranging from terrorism to a general increase in awareness, anti-fraud operations face many of the same challenges other financial departments must contend with: more work to do, but too few accountants to do it with.

In my own rounds of the exhibit hall, I found an interested mix of organizations, not all of whom are here to peddle their services. Recruitment of fraud examiners is a priority for a lot of companies and government agencies. Here's a sampling:

• The National Reconnaissance Office
• Naval Criminal Investigative Servide
• Secret Service
• National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association
• I2 Software
• Fraud Exchange Software
• Huron Consulting Group
• Georgia Southern University College of Business Administration
• U.S. Postal Inspection Service
• Deloitte
• PricewaterhouseCoopers
• Internal Revenue Service
• Institute for Fraud Prevention

Not all of these folks are here with a focus on recruitment, though that seems to be precisely why the government agencies have set up booths. What's interesting about the list is the range of opportunities it illustrates. On top of government, there are software companies here, industry associations, several publishers and a number of service providers.

Oh, and if anyone's interested, I'm speaking Monday about the effective use of online job boards. It's at 1:10 in the exhibit all.