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NYCFE NEWSLETTER - Spring 2008 - VOLUME 1 |
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
BY NOEL BARRETO, CFE, CPP
I want to thank my Board of Directors for their help, input and ideas. I also want to thank everyone who attended our meeting this past January. The attendance and participation was incredible and I look forward to seeing each of you at all of our future meetings. Please see the article below by our Director of Training about our January 30, 2008 meeting.
We are trying to facilitate an all day seminar in the fall and need guest speakers. If you would like to participate or know of anyone please contact Ron Semaria at our office.
I look forward to an exciting term with many new seminars, meetings and perhaps a dinner dance. None of this can be accomplished without your help. The only requirement for helping us is that you volunteer. Remember, the more volunteers, the more we can accomplish and make this the best and biggest Chapter.
Thank you for making our first meeting such a huge success and I am looking forward to seeing each of you at our meeting on May 14, 2008.
Sincerely,
Noel Barreto, President
DIRECTOR OF TRAINING REPORT
JANUARY 30, 2008 MEETING SUMMARY
BY Roman Z Matatov,CPA,
CVA, CFE
We experienced a terrific turnout for our
January 30, 2008 New York Chapter CPE seminar. For those of you who were able to
attend, we thank you for your participation and attendance. For those of you who
were not able to attend, we look forward to seeing you at future events. When
reviewing the seminar evaluation sheets which most of you submitted to the
Chapter, we came across several interesting statistics which we wish to share.
Median experience of attendees: 25 years
Median rating of the course: 9.5 of 10
All who responded were CFE's
Median Overall Facility Rating: 9
Median Springate rating: 9.5
Median Kleckner rating: 10
10 out of 18 respondents indicated that this course helped them "A lot" in their
work.
15 out of 18 respondents indicated that they would recommend this course to
colleagues
For those that agreed to be quoted in the Association literature, comments on
what they liked best included:
"Being together and sharing insight"
"...To the point, filled with good advice, and easily followed" "Amazing Value"
We look forward to seeing you all at future events and welcome any further
comments. Appreciatively,
Suspicious Activity Reporting System
S.A.R.S.
BY Rainer A. Melucci CFE
Past President NY Chapter ACFE
SARS was designed to be the center piece
of a new approach to using the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to fight financial crime,
an involved and unparalleled attempt to build an explicit and continuous data
flow about potentially serious activity among depository institutions detecting
that activity; five federal financial supervisory agencies the Federal Reserve
Board, Office the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, Office of Thrift Supervision, The National Credit Union
Administration and the IRS. Conclusion: SARS has made a strong and effective
beginning. A nationwide system is now in place for filing and distribution of
suspicious activity reports. Equally, if not more importantly, the banking
community has made strong efforts to support SARS. FinCen is also responsible
for analyzing this information and providing the resulting intelligence to
investigators, regulators, and the banking industry to provide an ability to
understand patterns of suspicious activity - or at least activity thought by
bank officials to be suspicious - so that government can alert banks to emerging
patterns of “white collar crime”. On a more fundamental level. SARS reflects the
philosophy that suspicious transaction reporting is central to counter-money
laundering policy, both in the United States and abroad. Officials at financial
institutions are more likely than government officials to have a sense as to
what transactions appear to lack commercial justification, or otherwise cannot
be explained as falling within the usual methods of legitimate commerce. Under
those circumstances simply relying on currency transaction reporting is neither
adequate nor cost effective for either the institutions involved or the
government. Here’s how it works, bankers are paying closer attention to the
facts when determining whether or not activity is suspicious. Moreover the
addition of a detailed narrative makes the data more valuable than it was when
banks could only check a box on the CTR. This value is illustrated by the fact
that it is now possible to summarize the sorts of conduct involved in the
reports. In addition, SAR filings in this group can be extremely valuable for
certain investigations.
This fact has been confirmed in a number of situations involving tax evasion.
There are a large number of cases that have been detected and explained by the
filing institutions which might be called “sloppy money laundering” - repeated
attempts and relatively unsophisticated schemes to structure deposits or to use
several persons to move currency into the same account. Approximately 4000
reports focus on bank activity other than currency deposits and withdrawals -
most importantly, suspicious funds transfer (wire transfer) transactions. In
fact a significant number of reports marked as “wire fraud” probably involve
money laundering. FinCen analysts believe that this last group of reports is
likely to provide the most promising area for case development. Therefore as
indicated prior, FinCen plans to focus resources on further analyzing this
information.
Fin-Cen is Financial Central a repository of financial Information collected to
determine suspicious activity.
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Executive Offices:
RONALD SEMARIA,
CFE,DABFE,FACFEI,CSC,CHS-III |
