Power Of Affirmations: The Fraud Triangle

1. The three aspects of fraud - Perceived pressure, Rationalization, and Opportunity were present in the CIT case as follows:

The book "Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time" by Susan Scott, is a guide to tackling challenges and help enrich relationships with everyone important to one's success and happiness through principles, tools, and assignments. Each component is designed to direct the reader through their first "fierce conversation" with themselves on to the most challenging and important conversations that could be faced.

(TCO 5) Fraud is an intentional misrepresentation of facts, made for the purpose of persuading another party to act in a way that causes injury or damage to that party. In our readings and discussions we have seen several examples of fraud in business. Using that experience (1) provide an example of a common fraudulent practice in business with an explanation of how the practice works and (2) name and describe each of the elements of the Fraud Triangle.

The best theoretical model of fraud to describe why HealthSouth committed fraud is the fraud diamond not the fraud triangle. Both methods require that these three elements are present for committing fraud: perceived pressure, perceived opportunity, and rationalization. Understanding what motivated HealthSouth’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Richard Scrushy to commit fraud, how the accounting staff committed and concealed the fraud, and how the staff justified their participation are crucial. However, anti-fraud professionals believe that changes in social behavior require the addition of a fourth element called capability. Capability includes “personal traits and abilities that play a major role in whether fraud will actually occur” (Fighting Fraud in the Government n.d.). For example, Scrushy’s persuasiveness and Cathy Edward’s position as Michael Vines’ boss increased their capabilities to commit fraud. If capable employees refused to participate, fraud occurrences decrease (Fighting Fraud in the Government n.d.) (Hamilton n.d.).

Every fraud scheme involves opportunities as it becomes the means for the perpetrators to commit the crime. Perpetrators actively pursue opportunities such as analyzing the circumstances that enable the fraud to be committed without getting caught. Pressures to commit fraud are based on various individual factors; for example, debt, status quo, or greed. The rationalization of the crimes are as demoralizing as the crimes, which relate to the pressure the perpetrator is conduced to in committing the crime. Tax fraud, divorce and bankruptcy fraud can all highly relate to the triangle fraud’s underlying factors in providing the source of the crimes that are presented in judicial court systems despite the notorious organizations or ex-love past

The video quotes, “Individuals are afraid of succeeding because of fear” (Mateusz, Brown, Thomas, & Smith, 2013). This quote captured my attention upon my initial viewing of the video titled, “Dream: Motivational Video,” because of the boldness it projected to the audience. The speech is approximately six minutes and was published on July 2, 2013. It provides the audience with a background on how they should make their dreams real. Although obstacles will develop when we are trying to fulfill dreams—the purpose is to separate from negativity and dream big. Even though the fear of failure overtakes our mind, we cannot allow the fear to deter us from living out our dream. Finally, the speech uses clips from movies titled, Into The Wild, Rocky 4, Seven Pounds, Pursuit of Happyness, and A Beautiful Mind that are inspirational and encouraging. For that reason, this synopsis examines the effectiveness of motivational speaking against the concepts that are found in Bateman and Snell’s text to propose that communication, motivating and inspiring people are essential to being an effective leader.

Staying relevant and growth oriented allows individuals to create those assets along the path to happiness. Plato bases his argument on “…the four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. ”(Austin) In the workplace, wisdom is so crucial. Whether you are brand new in a position or a veteran, utilizing wise ethical choices will earn you happiness in the long run.

Lamb believes in unlimited possibilities. She will do anything in her power and use any resources possible to succeed. By getting to know her this past summer and being exposed to her positive attitude on a daily basis, I learned that anything is possible with an optimistic outlook. My ambition has exponentially grown, and I do not put up futile roadblocks when I am trying to accomplish a goal. While Ms. Lamb has an extremely motivating personality, every business professional she attracts to her organization to teach her students is equally motivating. Learning from true professionals in the top of their field with a “Sabrina Lamb” outlook on life was

Case 1 From the case, it is easy to believe that Mary Blauser, 51, is a trusted employee of the school district. Therefore, as a trusted employee, she became a trust violator because she had a conception that she had a financial problem that cannot be shared with her employers. For this reason, the fraud occurs because the financial trust position is in her hands and therefore she decided to secretly solve it. The school district was correct to perform an internal audit to predict the failures of their finances and turned to the police for help. The three elements of the fraud triangle involved in this case include the perceived unshareable financial needs which forced Blauser to commit the fraud; the perceived opportunity made her able to apply her own conduct to her situation; finally, the rationalization concept is

“ You can only control two things in your life: your attitude and your work ethic” - Ali Krieger.

I pride myself on being consistent, reliable, and professional in all circumstances. As a Teaching Partner at MLK Charter, I worked in an ever-changing environment that required me to be flexible and versatile. Since this was an instructional position, multiple needs often arose simultaneously, which required efficient time use and sound judgment. As part of the Technology Committee, I was one of a small team that held monthly meetings to discuss company technology needs, budget

Creating awareness is process used to make people know that information is available and how to deal with fraud /corruption if they hear about the matter to assist Bow Treasures in preventing fraud and corruption.

“The first leg of the fraud triangle represents pressure. This is what motivates the crime in the first place. The individual

Fraud is defined as a deliberate misrepresentation that causes a person or business to suffer damages, often in the form of monetary losses through deception or concealment. And Occupational Fraud as defined by the ACFE is the use of one’s occupation for personal enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization’s resources or assets. Traditional fraud triangle theory by Donald Cressey explains that propensity of fraud occurring in an organization lies on three critical elements which are Pressure, Opportunity, and Rationalization.

Essentially, all three elements of the fraud triangle must be present for fraud to be committed: pressure, opportunity, and rationalization. Additionally, nine factors provided the atmosphere for the perfect fraud storm of 2000 through 2002. The nine factors included: economy, moral values, incentives, expectations, debt, accounting rules, auditor dependence, greed, and educator failures (Albrecht et al., 2012). When combined with the elements of the fraud triangle these factors enabled organizations such as Enron and WorldCom to commit the fraudulent activities that resulted in this perfect storm.