Fraud costs U.S. organizations $652 billion annually, but very few colleges prepare students to tackle the problem. Lynchburg College is about to become one of a handful of institutions to offer an interdisciplinary major in Economic Crime Prevention and Investigation.
Slated to launch this fall, the major seeks to equip students for entry-level financial forensic investigation positions in both public and private sectors organizations, and to instill a passion for fighting corruption and abuse wherever it is found.
Dr. David Murphy, lead faculty member for the major, said such an offering is rare for a very practical reason. "There are very few accounting faculty with any fraud investigation experience at all," he said.
Murphy has an extensive background in fraud and anti-corruption consulting, including two years as the director of a USAID-funded anti-corruption graduate program in Bolivia and a year as both the chief-of-party for the USAID Accounting Reform Project in Uzbekistan and the regional training director for Central Asia.
In 2000, Murphy spent a year as the senior anti-corruption advisor to the controller general of Peru, where he also trained fraud investigators for the Peruvian Supreme Audit Institution.
More recently he has been traveling to Bulgaria to train fraud and anti-corruption professionals for the Bulgarian National Audit Office and to assist in the development of public sector financial management and control and to audit legislation.
Local law enforcement officials will also lend expertise to the program.
The extent of white-collar crime is startling. The 2006 Report to the Nation published by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that fraud costs U.S. organizations $652 billion annually. If a company has an after-tax profit of 10 percent on sales it would need to generate an additional $1million in sales to recover a $100,000 fraud loss. All consumers feel the effect of white-collar crime through increased prices.
The U. S. News and World Report (1996) listed forensic accounting as one of the "20 hot job tracks" for the future.
Students in LC's Economic Crime Prevention and Investigation will discuss the causes and implications of corrupt behavior in organizations; describe how internal control systems are used to prevent corrupt behavior; explain how accounting systems are used to record transactions and how information technology can be used as a tool in financial forensic investigations; and learn how to acquire, store and evaluate electronic evidence.
Students will also design and implement investigative programs to search for evidence of economic crimes and apply their knowledge in a field setting.
In spite of the demand for individuals who can investigate white collar crimes or develop white collar crime prevention programs, only a limited number of colleges and universities have developed such programs. Lynchburg College joins the three flagship programs in the United States, Utica College, Florida Atlantic University, and West Virginia University.
For more information, contact Dr. David Murphy at 434/544-8387 or Murphy.d@lynchburg.edu.