Mike Comer is speaking at the ACFE European Fraud Conference in Central London on Monday 23rd March 2015 between 13.40 and 15.00
Please click here for the full 3 day programme and booking form http://www.acfe.com/european.aspx
Applying Advanced Verbal Judo-Tongue Fu Techniques (VJtf) to Interrogations and Interviews
Summary:
Many cases of serious fraud are irreparably
compromised within 24 hours of discovery. The predominant failures were that
first responders did not recognize the importance of planning the initial
exchanges or having a Fraud Theory and chronology or a road map in leading them to the “Deep Truth”.
“Deep Truth” means establishing the facts
of the current case beyond reasonable doubt and developing intelligence on
other matters including "unknown unknowns" to:
- Clear innocent people and organisations wrongly suspected at the earliest possible stage;
- Obtain confessions or incontrovertible evidence of guilt, thereby avoiding costly and prolonged litigation.
Although there is extensive American literature on
conducting interviews with suspects and witnesses, the prevailing obsession –
in many other countries including the UK - is on low-intensity processes
involving “conversation management” or “an appropriately requested free
narrative”. One leading studycommented:
“It wasn’t an
interrogation it was a careers interview. The police ended up looking like a
sandal wearing convention of bleeding heart liberals”.
The rationale given for low-intensity interviewing is
that it eliminates the risk of innocent people confessing, under pressure from
unscrupulous interrogators, to crimes they had not committed. This can happen. This session discusses recent research by the University of Virginia School of Law into false confessions. However, in the commercial world false confessions are
unlikely and easily eliminated by post-interview validation.
The downside of ineffective interviewing is a failure
to clear innocent people until they have been dragged through courts, it allows
villains to escape unpunished, opens to door to counter-attacks, leads to protracted trials, massive legal fees,
acquittals and other problems for victim organisations. All could have been
avoided by effective and ethical interrogations and interviews in the first
instance.
Experience is unequivocal: the earlier in an
investigation innocent people are cleared of suspicion and bad guys swayed to
confess, the better. Hoping that interview failures can be recovered – and the
deep truth exposed - through coercion by prosecutors at a plea bargaining stage
or in a criminal trial is a fallacy.
Abstract:
This session is based on over 40 years’
experience of international corporate fraud investigations by a recognised
world authority;
It focuses on:
- Uncovering the Deep Truth – ethically and unconditionally - at the earliest stages of an investigation; clearing innocent people with certainty while leaving offenders with no room for maneuver;
- Important realities of corporate fraud, corruption, deception, interrogations, interviews, confessions and admissions in the business world;
- The criticality of frames, transactional analysis, reference points, present positions, empathy and rapport in getting to the Deep Truth and misconceptions concerning them;
- Why non-verbal communications, responses, narratives, summary statements and snap phrases are more important to finding the Deep Truth than open questions and free narratives;
- Why people confess; in the face of ethical and effective persuasive levers;
Further Information and Booking
http://www.acfe.com/european.aspxCopy of Mike Comer's paper
Please click HERE
