Acctg. 505
Fraud Examination
Spring 2015
Dr. Martha S. Doran
Phone/message: 594-6841
Office: SSE 2419
Email: doran1@mail.sdsu.edu
Office Hours: Mondays 2:30- 3:30, after class, by appointment, email or Skype
Course Design: Welcome to Fraud Examination, a course designed to offer
undergraduates and graduates an accounting elective that builds on your audit
coursework, but is not limited to an audit perspective. We will study the major schemes
used to defraud organizations and individuals. We will work to increase our skills in the
areas of fraud prevention, detection, analysis and some skills relating to investigations.
As a broad, survey course, you will be exposed to skills and tools that can help you
become better auditors, consultants, tax professionals, and managers, as well as more
astute employees, investors and world citizens.
Goals and Objectives: Both the College of Business Administration and the Lamden
School of Accountancy have program wide goals for our students as listed below:
BSBA Program Goals
BSBA students will graduate being:
 Effective Communicators
 Critical Thinkers
 Able to Analyze Ethical
Problems
 Global in their perspective
 Knowledgeable about the
essentials of business
MSA Program Goals
MSA students will graduate being able
to
 Compare, contrast, interpret, or
criticize accounting and business
decisions and information using
professional business
communication





Actively participate in team
decision making.
Apply ethical judgment and
professional standards in
analyzing situations and
formulating accounting and
business decisions
Use relevant research tools and
academic/professional literature
to analyze or take a position in
accounting and business
situations
Address unstructured problems
in the areas of accounting
information systems, financial
reporting, or taxation
Identify and discuss the
significance of diversity and
cultural differences in the global
business environment
Acctg. 505 contributes to these goals through its student learning outcomes, as described
in the Objectives section.
Objectives: To provide students in accounting with a course that examines one of the
biggest problems facing business in the 21st Century: Fraud. By the end of the semester,
students should be able to:
 define the nature of fraud, who commits it and why,
 identify methods to prevent fraud,
 recognize the symptoms of fraud,
 evaluate approaches to detecting fraud,
 comprehend and apply fraud investigation techniques,
 apply ethical decision-making skills to fraud scenarios.
 make effective oral presentations in fraud awareness that are informative as well
as persuasive, and
 write well organized, readable case analyses, essays and reports using appropriate
fraud and accounting terminology.
Required Course texts:
Principles of Fraud Examination, by Joseph T. Wells, CFE, CPA from John Wiley &
Sons, Inc. – Fourth Edition
One of These Two Paperbacks is Required:
The Soul of Money: Reclaiming the Wealth of Our Inner Resources Paperback –
October 17, 2006 by Lynne Twist (Author),
ISBN-13: 978-0393329506 ISBN-10: 039332950X Edition: Reprint
OR
Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money
and Achieving Financial Independence: Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
Paperback – December 10, 2008 by Vicki Robin (Author), Joe Dominguez(Author),
Monique Tilford (Author) ISBN-13: 978-0143115762 ISBN-10: 0143115766
These course materials are available at the SDSU Bookstore (it matches lower prices
from Amazon and others in most cases). The Bookstore is a not-for-profit campus partner
and its proceeds support SDSU initiatives.”
Course Prerequisites: Acctg. 421 or Acctg. 626 or equivalent.
Course Requirement in Community/Service Learning: Student teams will participate
in providing fraud awareness to a group in the community by designing, developing and
presenting a topic that can increase the public’s fraud awareness (as consumers,
employees, citizens). We will frame many of the class activities and discussions in terms
of how we can most effectively disseminate this knowledge to the target audience.
Students will need to gather initial fraud awareness information from their selected
audience and use this pre-survey information to design their presentations. Following the
presentations, students will collect some post-survey information from the audience and
use this to evaluate their efforts. Many of our cases and chapters focus on the theories and
practices in ethical decision-making, a key component of fraud prevention. Students will
have the opportunity to reflect on their work in designing fraud awareness presentations,
and then comparing their actual work to textbook materials. Our final class will include a
discussion of how the accounting professional can best serve the public, in light of each
team’s experience.
Personal Development and Awareness: Students will have the opportunity to explore
various personal development tools such as mindfulness meditation, values assessments,
and their relationship with money by visiting websites, watching videos, and taking
surveys. We will discuss these tools and our reactions to them during class, as a way to
help further develop ethical decision-making, critical thinking and effective
communication skills.
SDSU Writing Center: Students can find support and help in the various writing
assignments by using the SDSU Writing Center. It is located in Love Library, Room
LA1103, next to the circulation desk. Hours of operations are Mondays through
Wednesdays from 8 am to 9pm, Thursdays from 9 am to 5pm and Fridays from 9am to
2pm. You can just drop by or make an appointment. Here is the website:
http://www.writingcenter.sdsu.edu/
Teams: You need to form teams of 5 students. Ideally, teams should include 1) both
genders, and 2) both native and non-native English speakers. Please have teams formed
by Monday, 2/2. One team member needs to email me AND bring a team listing to
class on 2/2.
Blackboard Courseware:
You can access Blackboard by visiting http://courses.sdsu.edu. I will use this site to post
course materials, direct you to additional external links of interest, post grades and most
important, to communicate with you between classes. It is your responsibility to check
this site during the week and to check your email. (Remember that your email address,
PIN, etc. can only be edited or changed by you, using SDSU’s WebPortal.)
Grading Scale:
Final Grades will be determined based on the following scale: 90% of the points and
above will qualify for the A range (including A- and A); 80% - 89% of the points will
qualify for the B range (including B-, B and B+), 73% - 79% will qualify for a C or C+,
70% - 72% will earn a C-, and below 70% will earn a D. (NOTE: Scoring less than 73%
of the points would not constitute graduate-level work and will be dealt with on a caseby-case basis.)
Grades are based on both effort and effectiveness, with more weight being awarded to the
actual results. So while effort is important and does earn some reward, the final outcome
or result is what matters most. For grading purposes, a grade of A exceeds the course
(and assignment) requirements in both quantity and quality; a grade of B exceeds in some
area; a grade of C meets the minimum requirements; a grade of D fails to meet the
minimum requirements; and a grade of F drastically fails to meet the minimum
requirements.
Graded Assignments: (Check the Schedule for Due Dates)
During the semester, you will produce a variety of “products” for me to evaluate, both to
help you conquer the new materials, as well as improve your existing skills in written and
oral communications. Additionally, these data points (graded assignments) will give me
a basis to form an opinion as to your final grade for the course. The final grade is the
university’s indicator of your level of achievement in the course. The more lasting record
is what you do with the results of your 15 week investment, and of which, you (and time)
will be the best evaluator!
The following categories describe what you will be required to turn in for a grade, along
with a weighting of each requirement. Please refer to the class schedule for due dates,
and check Blackboard for more complete instructions for the various assignments.
Write-Ups (10%): You will individually complete and turn in various assignments noted
in the schedule. This will include (but not limited to), write ups, online assignments,
reflection essays, and speaker research. Please check the course schedule for the various
due dates.
Participation (5%): You have an opportunity (and responsibility) to share your ideas and
observations when we discuss various readings and cases, the Write -up questions,
videos, the personal development tools, etc. Class participation can only be earned IF
you are present in class; you voluntarily share your ideas and provide answers to
questions I raise in class.
In the News (5%) To help you become more aware of fraud in our society, you need to
develop a pattern of skimming and reading business headlines on fraud articles,
information, statistics, etc. We will start each class with time devoted to the headline
sharing (In the News). To earn credit for an In the News article, you must type up a brief
(one to two paragraph) summary of your article, fully reference it as a citation and
discuss (one paragraph) how it ties to what we are studying in class. Some students also
find this a good way to be able to share (participate) more fully in class and earn
Participation credit. (Note: To just earn participation credit, you do not need to turn in a
write up.)
Relationship with Money Essay (20%): Individuals will prepare an essay reflection on
their personal relationship with money, relating their reflections to themselves, to
specifics from book (Twist or Robin) and to the profession.
Exam (35%): The exam will include multiple choice questions, short case analysis, and
an In the News analysis, similar to the problems and cases we discuss in class.
Group Presentations (25%): At the end of the semester, 1) your team will present to the
class your findings on a local fraud the team has investigated and analyzed. The
presentation and write up should be in the form of a fraud case. 2) Your team will design
and develop a short fraud awareness presentation to a community group, prepare and
submit a report to me, and then discuss your results with the class at our final meeting.
Ethical and Professional Behavior
Since our class is focused on gaining an awareness of fraud along with an understanding
of ethical decision-making, we need to adhere to the highest level of professional
behaviors. To make sure we all understand and are on the same page in terms of what the
university considers cheating and plagiarism, I have reproduced the policy below.
This class will follow the university policy in regard to cheating or plagiarism. If you
have ANY doubts as to what constitutes such behavior, please see me with any questions,
BEFORE you submit an assignment. Asking questions after I have brought cheating or
plagiarism issues to your attention does not help you or me or the profession!
Cheating or plagiarism in connection with an academic program at a campus.1
a)
Examples of cheating include unauthorized sharing of answers during an exam, use of
unauthorized notes or study materials during an exam, altering an exam and resubmitting it for
regrading, having another student take an exam for you or submit assignments in your name,
participating in unauthorized collaboration on coursework to be graded, providing false data for a
research paper, or creating/citing false or fictitious references for a term paper. (Submitting the
same paper for multiple classes may also be considered cheating if not authorized by the
instructors involved).
b) Examples of plagiarism include any attempt to take credit for work that is not your own, such as
using direct quotes from an author without using quotation marks or indentation in a paper,
paraphrasing work that is not your own without giving credit to the original source of the idea, or
failing to properly cite all sources in the body of your work.
Accommodations for Students with Disabilities:
Here is the most recent policy statement from the Academic Senate:
If you are a student with a disability and believe you will need accommodations for this
class, it is your responsibility to contact Student Disability Services at (619) 594-6473.
To avoid any delay in the receipt of your accommodations, you should contact Student
Disability Services as soon as possible. Please note that accommodations are not
retroactive, and that accommodations based upon disability cannot be provided until you
have presented your instructor with an accommodation letter from Student Disability
Services. Your cooperation is appreciated. The web site for Student Disability Services
is: http://www.sa.sdsu.edu/sds/index.html
1
Plagiarism: taken directly from SDSU’s Code Section 41301: