embezzlement
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17 Counts in 4 Months: How a Newspaper Bookkeeper Allegedly Embezzled $18K

A small newspaper trusts its bookkeeper with the company credit card. Four months later, roughly $18,000 has quietly moved through unauthorized charges before anyone notices. That is the outline of a recent case out of Curry County, New Mexico, where a former Eastern New Mexico News bookkeeper was charged with 17 counts of embezzlement, plus […]
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oil prices drop before peace deals Detection signs Fraud & Order tips
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Why Oil Prices Drop Before Peace Deals and What Insider Trading Looks Like to a Fraud Investigator

When Brent crude slid toward $70 a barrel in mid-2026, after months above $90 during the Strait of Hormuz crisis, most people saw a headline about cheaper gas. A fraud investigator sees something else: a moment where a handful of people almost certainly knew a peace framework was coming before the market did and some […]
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money mules
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What the Newcastle $100M Laundering Case Reveals About How Money Mules Get Trapped

In February 2026, a 47-year-old man from Newcastle, Washington pleaded guilty to helping launder nearly $100 million in fraud proceeds. He set up nine business entities with legitimate-sounding names like Apex Oil and Gas Trading, accepted money from investors who thought they were funding oil and gas storage, then funneled it to coconspirators’ bank accounts […]
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small business fraud
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The Most Common Fraud Method We See in Small Businesses, Ranked by Frequency

Small businesses lose more to fraud, dollar for dollar, than the giants do. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) 2024 Report to the Nations, organizations with fewer than 100 employees suffered a median loss of $141,000 per case, and the typical organization loses roughly 5 percent of its annual revenue to fraud […]
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Which Industries Hire Us Most for Fraud Investigations (And What That Says About Risk)

Patterns tell a story. After decades of casework, one thing becomes clear: fraud does not strike every industry equally. Some sectors call for a fraud investigation far more often than others, and the reasons are rarely random. Where money moves fast, oversight is thin, or trust is assumed rather than verified, fraud follows. The numbers […]
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$642K Stolen From a Contractor
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$642K Stolen From a Contractor, 8 Years in Prison: What the Jaragosky Case Teaches Small Businesses

She was hired in 2018. She started stealing in April 2019. She was not caught until March 2025. Nearly six years. One employee. $642,013.90 gone from a mechanical services contractor in Eugene, Oregon. In March 2026, a Lane County judge sentenced Melisa Ann Juline Jaragosky to 96 months in prison plus two years of post-prison […]
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What Actually Tips Off an Embezzler's Employer
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What Actually Tips Off an Embezzler’s Employer: The Detection Data

Ask most executives how they expect to catch an embezzler and they will describe an audit: a sharp-eyed accountant, an unexplainable variance, a paper trail unraveling under scrutiny. The data says otherwise. The ACFE’s Occupational Fraud 2026: A Report to the Nations analyzed 2,402 real cases across 143 countries representing more than $3.4 billion in […]
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5 Fraud Red Flags Every Case Shares
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The 5 Red Flags That Showed Up in Almost Every Fraud Case We’ve Worked

Occupational fraud cost organizations at least 3.1 billion dollars in confirmed losses, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ most recent global study, and that figure only reflects cases that were actually caught. The typical organization loses about 5% of annual revenue to fraud every year. What’s more telling: 84% of fraudsters displayed at […]
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