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There is increasing international concern about the escalation of fraud and, in particular, financial statement fraud. Detecting financial statement fraud and proving such fraud remains an elusive goal. Red flagging is an early warning system that has been used by auditors to determine the probability of financial statement fraud. The purpose of this research project was to survey investors and lenders in South Africa on their use of red flags and to obtain their opinions on the relative importance of individual red flags. A questionnaire was sent to banks that are registered with the Registrar of Banks (representative of lenders) and to portfolio managers registered with the Financial Services Board (representative of investors). The research findings indicate that lenders and investors in South Africa appear to be aware of the benefits of red flagging as an early warning system. A structured approach (questionnaires/checklists) in using them is to be lacking at present. Respondents rated all red flags in the questionnaire as being important. No distinction was discernable among the different categories that were based on the nature of red flags.

Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) No. 53 requires that the audit be designed to provide a reasonable assurance of detecting management fraud. Traditionally auditors have utilized personal, business, and economic red flags in risk analysis and audit planning. Touche Ross (1974), Coopers and Lybrand (1977), Price Waterhouse (1985), and SAS Nos. 6, 16, 17, and 53 discuss various red flags associated with management fraud. However, the authoritative literature does not provide any guidance on how to measure and combine red flags. The extant literature primarily measures red flags as “yes” or “no” type binary variables. However, red flags are fuzzy in nature and fuzzy set approach can be used to measure and combine red flags. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for the application of the theory of fuzzy sets to the problem of assessing the risk of management fraud using red flags. This approach can be used to capture the beliefs of one or several auditors concerning red flags and combine these beliefs to estimate the risk of management fraud. This approach can be extended to build fuzzy reasoning systems that assess the risk of management fraud.

This study aims to, firstly, develop a red flag checklist for cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes and, secondly, to test this red flag checklist against publicly available marketing material for Mirror Trading International (MTI). The red flag checklist test seeks to establish if MTI’s marketing material posted on YouTube^® (in the form of a live video presentation) exhibits any of the red flags from the checklist.

The study uses a structured literature review and qualitative analysis of red flags for Ponzi and cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes.

A research lacuna was discovered with regard to cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme red flags. By means of a structured literature review, journal papers were identified that listed and discussed Ponzi scheme red flags. The red flags from the identified journal papers were subsequently used in a qualitative analysis. The analyses and syntheses resulted in the development of a red flag checklist for cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes, with five red flag categories, containing 18 associated red flags. The red flag checklist was then tested against MTI’s marketing material (a transcription of a live YouTube presentation). The test resulted in MTI’s marketing material exhibiting 88% of the red flags contained within the checklist.

The inherent limitations in the design of using a structured literature review and the lack of research regarding the cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme red flags.

The study provides a red flag checklist for cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes. The red flag checklist can be applied to a cryptocurrency investment scheme’s marketing material to establish if it exhibits any of these red flags.

The red flag checklist can be applied to a cryptocurrency investment scheme’s marketing material to establish if it exhibits any of these red flags.

The study provides a red flag checklist for cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes.

Aims to identify the most important red flags as individually perceived by auditors, and explores whether auditors' demographic factors might impact on their perception of the relative importance of red flags in Malaysia, particularly in the Klang Valley area.

This study employed a mailed survey as a method of data collection. The respondents to this survey are practicing auditors from audit firms in Kuala Lumpur. The sample of auditors is taken from the population of domestic listed audit firms with the Malaysian Institute of Accountants as of 27 March 2003. A simple random technique is applied to construct the sample.

In general, subjects indicated that the operating and financial stability category was judged as most important, followed by management characteristics and influence over the control environment, and then finally by industry characteristics.

It would be interesting to examine whether these fraud risk indicators are indeed helpful in the investigation of reported misconduct and fraudulent cases in Malaysia. The findings may help researchers to develop a new fraud risk indicator that takes into consideration actual instances of fraud in Malaysia.

Artificial‐life techniques – specifically, agent‐based models and evolutionary learning algorithms – provide a potentially powerful new approach to understanding some of the fundamental processes of war. This paper introduces a simple artificial‐like “toy model” of combat called Enhanced ISAAC Neural Simulation Tool (EINSTein). EINSTein is designed to illustrate how certain aspects of land combat can be viewed as self‐organized, emergent phenomena resulting from the dynamical web of interactions among notional combatants. EINSTein's bottom‐up, synthesist approach to the modeling of combat stands in stark contrast to the more traditional top‐down, or reductionist approach taken by conventional military models, and represents a step toward developing a complex systems theoretic toolbox for identifying, exploring, and possibly exploiting self‐organized emergent collective patterns of behavior on the real battlefield. A description of the model is provided, along with examples of emergent agent patterns and behaviors.

In 1988, the US standard form audit report experienced its first major modification in 39 years. Among the objectives of the “new” report were better auditor/user communications leading to, among other things, an abridgement of auditor liability. Nearly a decade later, this issue has yet to be addressed empirically and with rigour. The empirical research reported examines the ability of the “new” audit report to reduce perceptions of auditor responsibility/liability across two instances of alleged audit failure. It is argued that a jurist’s advantage of “perfect hindsight” may mitigate the effectiveness of revised communications contained in the audit report, in instances where audit risk at the time of the audit appears high. Accordingly, consideration of environments of both high and low perceived risk were provided in a behavioural experiment conducted with 81 investors serving as subjects. Findings reveal that the revised audit report language may provide relief for auditor liability, but the presence of red‐flags, or red‐flag related environmental conditions, may exacerbate negative perceptions.

This chapter examines whether professional auditors’ affect toward client management influences fraud likelihood judgments and whether accountability and experience with fraud risk judgments moderate this effect. This research also explores the process by which affect influences fraud judgments by examining affect’s influence on the evaluation of fraud evidence cues. Results indicate that more positive affect toward the client results in lower fraud likelihood judgments. Accountability is found to moderate this effect, but only for experienced auditors. These findings have implications for fraud brainstorming sessions where all staff levels provide input into fraud risk assessments and because client characteristics are especially salient during these assessments. Importantly, results also support the proposition that affect impacts inexperienced auditors’ fraud assessments through errant attribution of client likability to evidence cues that refer to management, rather than biasing all client-related evaluations. Together, these findings suggest that education and training can be improved to better differentiate relevant and irrelevant cues in fraud judgment.

This study focuses on a survey of chief financial officers (CFOs) in public firms in Japan concerning the following six points: the importance of the definition earnings quality; higher quality earnings; the determinants of earnings quality; prevalence, magnitude, and motivation of earnings management; accounting that influences earnings quality; and misrepresenting of earnings. The results are following: first, Japanese CFOs define earnings quality as earnings accurately reflecting economic reality, earnings accurately reflecting the results of operations, and earnings backed by cash flows, earnings sustainability, recurring, and consistent, and earnings reflecting long-term trend importance. Second, Japanese firms consider earnings that reflect consistent reporting choices over time as higher quality. They do not consider that earnings having accruals that are eventually realized as cash flow as higher earnings quality. Third, Japanese CFOs indicate that 30% of earnings quality is impacted by firm characteristics such as firm’s business model, industry, and macroeconomic conditions. Surprisingly, the influence of the board of directors is greater than the impact of their internal controls. Fourth, as for the determinants of earnings quality, CFOs consider that more than 70% of Japanese CFOs do not allow the discretion and that accounting standards limit their ability to report higher earning quality. Fifth, Japanese CFOs consider that higher earnings are influenced by accounting principles such as policies that match expenses with revenues and policies that rely on fair value accounting as much as possible. Sixth, CFOs themselves predict that 50% of Japanese firms use discretions and that they use 20% of earnings per share (EPS). Since there is inside and outside pressure to hit earnings benchmarks, Japanese firms possess the motivation to use earnings to misrepresent economic performance, Japanese managers see a red flag when generally accepted accounting principle’s earnings do not correlate with cash flow from operations.

The purpose of this paper is to forward specific policy proposals permitting greater sharing of health data across multi-level government agencies with the purpose of improving rapid identification of bioterrorist attack or disease epidemics while protecting patient privacy.

A systematic literature review searched the following keyword phrases: knowledge sharing in the public sector, raw data sharing, interagency information systems, federal data sharing technology network and network theory on five primary databases.

The volunteer nature of data sharing must evolve through public health policy to permit interagency data access agreements while minimizing privacy infringement. A multi-level information infrastructure network linking agencies tasked to develop medical countermeasures is recommended.

This study optimizes the health data collection process to create a medical countermeasure network, demonstrates the utility of operationalizing data metrics for a US federal agency and advances meaningful use of electronic medical records.

State‐based management (SBM) is a specific form of the game‐play methodology (GPM) – an approach to the application of constraints in humanity activity systems. The theory that supports GPM was developed using a team sports model and promotes a coordination of workers’ efforts, without limiting their individual abilities to be creative in support of corporate goals. This paper reports on research undertaken to prove the applicability of GPM to a business environment. The case studies focused on over‐the‐counter (OTC) banking services. The use of game‐play tactics (SBM) in the banking chamber was highly successful. It provided a mechanism for designing constraints that addressed issues of the incomplete and inaccurate system state knowledge usually held by the tellers. Further, the process promoted the development of a team ethos, and this change in attitudes had positive repercussions on the overall working environment