Patience and Persistence Key in Investigating Financial Crimes
A degree in finance or business is not needed to investigate a financial crime. Patience and persistence are the only skills required.
Financial crimes are diverse – a stolen credit card, a forged check, or complex employee theft or scams. Regardless of how cautious people are, anyone, at any time, can be a victim of a financial crime. Like the crimes themselves, victims have many faces - the elderly, owners of the local mom-and-pop store, family and friends, and other community members. Financial crimes can be devastating to the victim, causing both financial and emotional loss. We owe it to them to thoroughly investigate financial crimes, so that the case can be successfully prosecuted.
A thorough investigation of financial crimes includes the following:
A detailed interview of the victim to determine the nature and circumstances surrounding the crime. Interviewing a victim can prove to be difficult. Often when a person learns that they have been a victim of a financial crime, several emotions and thoughts overcome them, particularly if the theft involves a large amount of money, has been taking place over a long period, or involves a person they loved or trusted. When interviewing the victim, you must treat the victim with care and respect.
During the interview, don’t offer advice, or comment, on what should have been done to try to prevent the theft or say, “at least no one was hurt.” The victim is hurt, maybe not physically, but emotionally. Be thoughtful with the words you use when interviewing the victim. You don’t want to start your relationship with them off on the wrong foot. Be patient.
During interviews, get as many details as possible. For example, in complex employee thefts, ask questions about how the business is set up financially – is the system computerized? If so, what programs are used? Who has access? Are the computers/programs password protected? Can the programs be enabled remotely? Are there physical checks? If so, where are those checks stored? Where does the business bank? And so on. You can never ask too many questions. For you to properly investigate the case, you must understand how the crime occurred. If you don’t understand it, neither will the prosecutor or jury. Don’t get frustrated or lose patience with the victim, but be persistent in questioning them to get the answers needed to investigate properly.
Obtaining Records
Once you have conducted a thorough interview, the next step will be to obtain all the records needed to prove the case. The entity from which you are requesting the records will most likely require you to produce a subpoena or search warrant before turning the records over to you. Write and have the judge sign the search warrant, or talk to your local commonwealth’s attorney about getting a grand jury subpoena for the records. Properly obtaining the records is critical to investigating the case. Again, this requires patience and persistence.
Once the records are obtained, thoroughly review them. Follow the money. Spreadsheets can be a valuable tool.
As you review the records, you will often determine that additional ones are needed. Follow those leads just as you would when investigating a more traditional case. For example, once you get the victim’s bank records, you may see that several forged checks were written from the account. How the person spent the stolen money may help explain their motivation for the theft – addiction, gambling, adultery, or maintaining a certain lifestyle. Records prove the case, so obtaining and understanding the records is imperative.
Ask the business producing them to certify the records. The certification is important for trial purposes. Certified records can usually be admitted in the trial without a witness from the business having to testify; uncertified records will require a person from the business to testify at trial. Most major banks and companies will not send a person to testify, so it’s important to ask that the records be certified.
Time can be of the essence, so you should move quickly to gather the information.
The next step in your investigation should be to interview the suspect. The records you obtain can be a helpful tool during the interview – ask specific questions about them and be clear about which records you are referring.
Using the records to ask specific questions, will avoid arguments down the road about the amount stolen and the amount of restitution owed to the victim. For example, don’t just ask, “Did you cash the checks?” Instead, ask “Did you deposit check number xxx?” This is important because most suspects don’t believe they stole as much as they did and will want to dispute the restitution owed to the victim.
If you are patient and persistent, you can thoroughly investigate a financial crime. Thorough investigations lead to successful prosecutions and thankful victims.
R. Keenon Swinford is a graduate of the University of Alabama (2010) and the Appalachian School of Law (2014). He has been an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney with the Fayette Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office since January of 2020, focusing on the prosecution of financial crimes.
