By Amy Logan
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. For many of the world’s most nefarious fraudsters, this may very well be true. Perhaps Italian-born Charles Ponzi would feel honored that 100 years later a Wall Street fat cat like Bernard Madoff would use his type of scheme to defraud tens of thousands of investors from all over the world out of billions of dollars, once again bringing Ponzi’s name into the headlines.
You can find memorabilia mentioning both of these notorious fraudsters in the ACFE Fraud Museum Traveling Exhibit, “International Infamy: Fraud on a Global Scale,” sponsored by the Institute of Fraud Prevention. Established by ACFE Founder and Chairman Dr. Joseph T. Wells, CFE, CPA, the Fraud Museum tells the story of fraud’s intriguing past with an extensive and eclectic collection of historical fraud pieces.
This year, the traveling exhibit will feature frauds that caused significant damage to their originating countries or spread to several others throughout the world. These larger-scale frauds were devastating in many ways for their times, and have helped to shape the educations of today’s fraud fighters. As they say, “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
You might be surprised at how well a Parmalat-sponsored soccer shirt serves as a history lesson about one of the world’s largest dairy manufacturers, an Italy-based company, which went bankrupt after an audit disclosed its debt to be nearly €14.5 billion.
And it might interest you that a debenture certificate for 100 Kronor issued by Aktiebolaget Kreuger and Toll of Stockholm, Sweden, in March of 1929, contains some background on the notorious Swedish Match King, Ivar Kreuger.
Even one of the smallest exhibits – a business card from Phillip R. Bennett – serves up a slice of infamous world history as it describes the fate of Refco, which went public in 2005 and then bankrupt three months later after Bennett failed to conceal the half-billion dollars in personal debt he’d charged on the company’s balance sheet.
These are just a few examples of internationally infamous frauds that wreaked havoc on economies around the world. Perhaps by examining these cases and remembering their outcomes, you can go forth and prevent future frauds that emulate them.
This is the fifth year the ACFE has brought its popular Traveling Exhibit to the annual conference. The permanent exhibit of the Fraud Museum is located at ACFE Headquarters in Austin, Texas, in the offices of the Geis Building.
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