By Erin O’Loughlin
eoloughlin@acfcs.org
March 16, 2022
Welcome to The Front Lines – a publication for the front-line investigator, risk officer, and compliance professional.
Here, ACFCS will discuss issues that directly affect your everyday work life, with the goal of offering practical, tactical takeaways that can immediately help you think differently, analyze more fully and act and react more quickly looking at historical and emerging challenges through the lens of an experienced investigator.
This month, we will examine how fraudsters prey on the hearts and souls of innocent people who wish to help their fellow man in times of unforeseen crises, particularly surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Heart of a Human
Since the advent of communities, human beings have been hard wired to do whatever it takes to protect their fellow human – whether that be saving your neighbor from a burning building, to providing money to alleviate human suffering on the other side of the world, we are programmed to protect our species.
From volcano eruptions in Iceland, to countries waging war on one another, human suffering is an aspect of life that is as inescapable as death and taxes. Unfortunately, so is the human capacity to deceive.
The opportunity for deception and fraud lies central amidst natural and man-made disasters. This means that fraud scams are prevalent within the first few days or weeks of any large-scale event that results in human suffering. …
