In March of 2023, I assisted the American Banker with its coverage of the guilty plea of Carrie Tolstedt, the former Retail Bank President of Wells Fargo Bank. Tolstedt ultimately plead guilty to 18 U.S.C. 1517, corruptly obstructing the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's examination of Wells Fargo Bank. Tolstedt is likely the highest ranking person to have ever been convicted of a crime in U.S. financial history, as well as the highest ranking female, having likely directed the fraudulent account misconduct of tens of thousands of Wells Fargo employees. Read the full story here: https://www.americanbanker.com/news/ex-wells-fargo-executive-carrie-tolstedt-agrees-to-guilty-plea
In 2022-2023, I assisted the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in their investigation of accounting and audit firm “Greenwashing.” The cross-border investigation, published in many news stories on March 1, 2023, exposed the flaws of the environmental auditing and certification industries designed to combat deforestation, illegal logging and other abuses by publicly traded companies. I served as one of the experts to assist the ICIJ with the business and audit practices of the US accounting industry, and the role these firms play in ESG. "The problem is that there are no legally binding rules on auditing companies’ sustainability claims," said Weber, who teaches forensic accounting at Salisbury University in Maryland. “This is the new frontier of accounting and where the money is,” said Weber, a former chief investigator for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “It’s the Wild West.” Read the full story on ESG failures here: https://www.icij.org/investigations/deforestation-inc/audit-firms-kpmg-environmental-sustainability-logging/
In Fall 2022, I assisted the American Banker with its investigation into corporate governance and insider abuse allegations at Maryland's second largest bank. As part of that investigation, Eagle Bank's CEO was banned from banking for life, after improperly obtaining nearly $100 million in loans from his own bank without authorization. "At the end of the day, there were people who turned a blind eye to this," said David Weber, a Maryland attorney and clinical assistant professor of accounting at Salisbury Maryland's Perdue School of Business. "The fact this wasn't discovered raises a lot of questions about corporate governance and the leadership of the bank." "Regulators have been particularly sensitive to insider lending since the 1990s, after a study commissioned by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found that banks with governance issues — including a history of insider lending violations — were significantly more likely to fail, Weber said. Specifically, insider abuse was a significant factor in 35% of the bank failures studied. According to Weber, the study defined insider abuse as self-dealing..."
You can read the story here: https://www.americanbanker.com/news/fed-bans-former-ceo-of-eagle-in-maryland-from-banking
In Spring 2022, I am assisting the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists who are investigating the role of professionals in creating shell companies and secrecy for corrupt Russian government officials and Russian Kleptocrats, who are attempting to evade sanctions and law enforcement inquiries into their ill-gotten gains. I am serving as one of the ICIJ's consulting experts on the investigation. You can read one of the first stories published here: https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/mordashov-pwc-russia-richest-offshore/
In Spring 2022, I served as the forensic accounting expert for the American Banker's investigation into Bank of America's violations of law and regulation for failing to prevent fraud in millions of debit card accounts created to receive pandemic assistance from state governments. You can read one of the stories here: https://www.americanbanker.com/news/federal-regulators-scrutinize-bofa-for-its-response-to-california-benefits-fraud
In July 2014, Bank of America was fined $225,000,000 as a result.
In Spring 2021, I served as the forensic accounting expert for a CBS News investigation into Bank of America's failures to prevent fraud in millions of unemployment benefits debit card accounts. The assistance included reviewing thousands of pages of BofA records for CBS News, as well as being interviewed on the Perdue School's campus as part of the investigation. You can watch the first of the interviews here: https://youtu.be/92fSMgxtXqo
In January 2021, I served as the consulting expert to the Associated Press in their coverage of the amendments to the USA PATRIOT ACT and the Bank Secrecy Act, the largest changes to US anti-money laundering law since at least 9/11. I was also quoted extensively in the stories, which were published in over 300 national and international news articles, one of which you can read here: https://apnews.com/article/business-miami-money-laundering-legislation-trump-investigations-1e6c527fafd9e5a7b56af1eff9d3247e
In Fall of 2020, I served as the forensic accounting expert for the Associated Press investigation into how the Venezuelan government circumvents global and US sanctions by use of a vast money laundering and trade financing scheme. Read more here: https://apnews.com/article/miami-asia-financial-markets-thailand-venezuela-33d7090b7a6b28cce840565b55da4785
