Step Transaction Fraud and Acquisition for Effect

In this instance the investor client that lost money was one of the largest retirement funds in the United States. As a result of his extensive investigation a settlement took place where the alleged conspirators repaid a portion of the investor's losses.

In the process of the assignment Hal became knowledgeable about a regularly occurring fraud about which the public seemed unaware and thus vulnerable to continued harm. He decided it would be in the best interest of the public if he developed a seminar to teach CPA's and other financially oriented professionals about how the scams work; of course without reference to any related lawsuit. The PowerPoint seminar he created was presented on one occasion on behalf of the FICPA in 2005 and, based upon the attendees' responses, it was well received.

But the FICPA presentation that was scheduled to be given by Hal in Orlando, Florida, the following year on June 23, 2006 was surprisingly cancelled at the last minute as communicated via telephone by Mr. Matthews of the FICPA. From then on Hal was given no further consideration by the FICPA as either an author or a lecturer. Essentially he was blacklisted.

While he subsequently continued to be a member of the FICPA committee that met annually to arrange courses to be presented at the annual convention of the section of the FICPA called VFALS (Valuation, Forensic Accounting and Litigation), anything he said or volunteered was ignored. In fact, the VFALS section stopped using the major category of Forensic Accounting as one of the headings in its course planning considerations; they used only Valuation and Litigation.

In mid-June 2011 Hal prepared a revised conference planning Excel worksheet that included all three categories that constitute the purpose of the section's existence and emailed it to all the members of the committee for their consideration. No response has been received and it is presumed that the change will not be made, the better to serve the personal interests of the valuation expert members and at the expense of the public subject to exploitation via fraud. The sustaining of the latter being perhaps a major purpose of the FBI thugs.

Although theoretical at this point, were it so that Step Transaction Fraud and Acquisition for Effect were well understood and properly considered by accountants and financial professionals in the United States, both governmental and public, it is much less likely that the housing bust and the underlying mortgage fraud would have occurred.

Again, for ease of reference:

"Step transaction fraud: A series of intentionally separated transactions or events -- usually involving multiple entities created to the task -- designed to establish the appearance of legitimacy of an individual transaction or event by obscuring the related connectivity and intent of the series as a whole."

"Acquisition for effect: While a fraudulent acquisition of a company may appear to have the same intent as a legitimate acquisition, examination of the substance as opposed to the form of the intimate components of the transaction (the related contracts and agreements in particular) focus on satisfying the illicit goals of the individual conspirators at the expense of the public."