are introduced to other leadership participants and a buddy/guide of some sort.  This buddy is usually a new hire or a first- or second-year staff.  He or she is your liaison. Be polite, get to know him or her, and don’t be afraid—Not too long ago they were right in your position—so feel free to ask any questions that are on your mind. As you get to know your buddy better, you will be able to ask more specific questions.

Hollie Andrus and Deborah Davis from the Utah State Auditor’s Office came and showed us how state
auditors work. The Utah state auditor’s office is the official office that audits the state of Utah. The
Utah state auditor’s office is like the Deloitte and KPMG employees for the state. They go and audit
entities that are owned by the state, which are required by the state constitution to be audited by the
state auditor’s office. They audit state universities, public safety offices, state courts, health services,
the tax commission, etc.

They are considered independent from the state because the Utah State Auditor is an elected position.
If you were able to vote in Utah last November then you had the opportunity to vote for who should be
in this position. The Utah State Auditor does not need to be a CPA to be elected into the position. The
new State Auditor has an engineering degree, and is bringing a new perspective to the auditing office.

Deborah explained to us that the Utah State Auditor’s Office still follows the same audit standards as
other auditors, which requires them to follow SAS 99. This stand-alone risk assessment standard, one
part of which compels the auditor to ask three questions, was the FASB’s response to the need of a
revision to the clarity standard, the FASB latter came out with more statements about clarity. The three
questions of SAS 99 are “Are you aware of fraud? Have suspicions of fraud? Or have heard allegations of
fraud?” These questions can lead to extremely interesting stories.

Deborah and Hollie told us about how when people answer yes to these questions the first thought that
runs through their head is “oh great I am going to blow my budget.” Deborah told us of a University
Professor that got federal grant money to teach a certain program at the university. He did not
accurately keep track of his time on the federal program and charged different expenses and even
family trips to Alaska to the account. They found out about the fraud from other professors that noticed
that the thief seemed to have more money than his salary could provide. It took a lot of time, but they
eventually unraveled the complex net.

From this experience, they told us that it is ok to go over budget when you have found something that
could lead to the discovery of a material misstatement or fraud.

This last Thursday Eric Lee from Grant Thornton came and gave us a deeper look at forensic accounting and fraud. In case you were not able to come to both meetings about this subject, forensic accounting is the identification, gathering, and interpretation of financial information suitable for use in a court of law. Eric had spent time with the FBI and then made the change to a firm. He enjoyed his old job, kicking in doors, arresting people, infiltrating drug gangs and performing interrogations with the FBI. He told us that it was hard to pretend to be a dirt bag to get into a drug gang, and raise a family. He also enjoys that people are not trying to kill him daily, he also enjoys the opportunity he has to build up networking relations with law firms, go golfing with lawyers and other events, and giving back to the community with his career at Grant Thornton.

 

Eric explained to us that as a forensic accountant there are two main areas that you are involved in. Investigations are the first area. Subjects like fraud, embezzlement, financial statement fraud, foreign corrupt practices act, shadow investigations, and anti-corruption consulting fall under this category. Under the foreign corrupt practices act Eric has gone out to other countries to see if any companies that do business in the United States bribe officials in other governments to get preferential treatment. Eric has been all over the world looking at other companies where one of their employees had blown the whistle on the company. Shadow investigations are where auditors shadow investigators to make sure that the auditors have all the information they need to make a decision on whether the auditors want to issue an opinion or drop the client.

The second area is Dispute Services. This has a lot to do with coming up with numbers to present in a court case or for lawyers to know how much to sue for. Damage valuation, expert testimony, litigation consulting, neutral arbitration, and post-acquisition disputes are covered by dispute services. Attorneys frequently hire forensic accountants to find out what happened to the money, and then the accountants usually give testimony in court.

There are many ways that you can get into a forensic accounting career. Eric suggested that since we are already in the accounting field, that we can try to get on as many shadow investigations as possible when we are in a firm. We have exceptional resources available to us right now as well. We have Professor Albrecht and Zimblemann that would be happy to talk about fraud any time they are free, as well as a Fraud club that can also help you find out more.

Mortgaged backed securitizations. The very name of these financial instruments most likely brings up bad memories for the average citizen in the United States. This last week we were visited by Peter Christensen, a VP in Goldman's BHC Regulatory Capital Group, and we learned more about what structured finance is all about.

A structured finance is a bond that is backed by cash flows made by a specific asset. You can securitize anything with a cash flow, residential and commercial mortgages, credit card receivables, and auto loans. You can choose how risky or reserved the structured finance bonds are by what you decide to securitize to make the structured bonds. A more advances form of a structured finance is called a collateralized debt obligation (CDO). This is where you take a lot of securitization bonds and securitize them into one bond.

The reason why it is possible to make a structured finance bond is a principle called “bankruptcy remote.” To achieve this, banks created special purpose vehicles to buy the loans from the banks to keep the assets safe from the chance that the banks go bankrupt before the bond is matured. This also allows the investors to focus on the bond risk alone, and not the risk that is tied to the bank.

Securitization is a way for the banks to raise capital for banks without issuing new debt or equity. This allowed the banks to be able to make more loans with cash that was on hand. In 2006 banks had been securitizing tons of home mortgages into these bonds. Most of these bonds held mortgages in California, Arizona, and Florida, where the economy of the state relied heavily on the health of the housing industry. When the bubble burst in 2007 the bonds started to go bad. No one was able to pay their mortgages, so the bonds did not receive the cash flow that was required.

The reason why the securitization bonds were so popular is because to the banks they seemed like a good investment to reinvest their money in. They felt like they understood the risks associated with the mortgage backed securities. Due to the traunching of securities, where there is a rating level to the risk you are taking, banks were able to make huge returns by reinvesting in the riskiest unrated class. Traunching is a rating system, the highest grade is the AAA ranking, followed by AA, A, BBB, BB, B, Unrated Class, where the AAA rating gets paid a lower interest rate for the money invested. The unrated class gets the highest interest rate, but when the cash flow starts to fail, their investment is the first to go. When people do not pay their mortgage or auto loan, then the unrated class, does not get paid, then B, BB, BBB, and so on until no one gets a return on their investment. In 2007 so many loans were defaulting that AAA investments were starting to drop off, it did not help that most investors had an AAA rating. Businesses that had investments in these securities were required by law to sell the investment. With the saturation of securities, and the declining price, a perfect storm was created in the economy.

There were a few companies that saw the storm on the horizon. A man at Deutsche bank was able to get on the other side of the transactions and made millions of dollars for his company. Also at Goldman – Sachs, who fair values all of their assets, they were able to see trouble and make money through the bursting bubble.

Securitizations today are more diverse and hopefully will not run into the same problems that were seen five years ago. Peter Christensen feels that to keep bank interest rates low, it is important that banks start using securitized bonds again. “The Fed cannot keep their interest rates at a minimum forever.”