APPLE is the company to use

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For this Portfolio Project, you will assume the role of a forensic analyst who has been asked by a business to conduct a forensic analysis to detect possible fraudulent activity. Perform such an analysis on this company using Excel and present your findings in a final case report, which will include a written component and a slide show presentation. You will be required to apply all of the skills and techniques that are presented in the eight course modules to run forensic tests and then interpret your findings and create a useable fraud strategy.

Part I. There are seven main areas that must be addressed in this investigation and in the final document report.

1. Company Profile (suggested length one page)

The company profile component of the assignment is a preliminary deliverable, due before midnight Sunday of Week 2.

Choose a company that will be the focus of your investigation. Begin by searching the internet to find a company about which you can obtain financial documents—at minimum an income statement and balance sheet. Larger companies can be located using a SEC 10-K Report. If you type this inGoogle followed by a company name you will see results, for example, SEC 10-K Report Coca-Cola. You can also locate financial records for companies using general Google searches and Ventureline.com, for which a link is provided below. Your instructor must approve of your company prior to your beginning substantive work on the project. Consider choosing a company that you can also obtain background information on as this will be useful for some areas of the investigation. For your final report provide a one paragraph to one page description of your company including basic facts such as financial status, market it operates in, product or service, etc.

Ventureline.com is an excellent site to research and obtain the financial statements of companies and to obtain results from specific ratio analyses.

https://www.ventureline.com/financial-statement-analysis/

2. Offender Profile (suggested length one page)

Using the criminological theories discussed in Module 2, develop a profile of the potential fraud offender for this company. Be sure to consider all factors in the company’s background, such as what geographic areas they operate in, whether and how often employees are in an office or in the field, what industry they operate in, competitor activity, past fraudulent activity, etc. For this section, focus exclusively on the offender. You will delve into red flags and risk factors in the next section.

3. Identify Risk (suggested length one page)

Utilize the techniques presented in Module 2 to create a list of potential internal and external threats to this company. Develop a list of at least 25 specific risks that the firm will face. For example, (1) check employee cell phone usage via report to identify personal use (internal threat) or (2) monitor any medical bills received from Dr. Smith, as he was just indicted for medical fraud (external threat).

4. Identify Red Flags (suggested length one page)

As discussed in Module 2, develop a list of red flags that your company can use as part of fraud prevention efforts. Remember that these can be used as part of your database parameters when performing forensic analytics. Design at least 10-15 red flags based on the risks developed in the previous section.

5. Analyze Financial Documents (suggested length two pages)

As presented in Module 5, review and analyze the financial information from your company. The first step in this section is to import your financial data into MS Excel. Once this is complete, perform a forensic analysis of the data, looking for discrepancies and abnormalities. Remember, when looking at financial data it is important to ponder the numbers myopically, but also don’t forget to take a broader perspective as well. In other words, as we discussed in Module 5, ask whether sales and revenue match, how they are related/correlated, etc. Paste your Excel spreadsheet into the document.

6. Perform Two Forensic Analytical Tests (suggested length two pages)

This is where you get to show off your skills! In this section of the paper, perform two forensic tests selected from the list below on company data. You may use any form of data to analyze. If you could not locate any useable data, you may fabricate your own data set using at least 10 data cells in Excel. The data you use must be approved by your instructor as a deliverable in the Week 4 outline. Following is a list of tests from which you must choose the two you will perform:

  • Data Profile
  • Histogram
  • Period Graph
  • Ratio
  • Correlation
  • Time-Series Analysis
  • Benford’s Law

7. Interpretation and Summary (suggested length two pages)

For the final section of your report, provide a full summary of your findings. Assemble an overview of your research on all sections listed. Don’t forget to include potential future threats that the company may face and also a formula for a successful fraud prevention strategy.

Support your analysis, assertions, and/or positions by citing and integrating knowledge from at least five

credible or scholarly sources, at least four of which are not the

course textbook. find credible

and scholarly sources. Your paper should be a minimum of 10 pages in length (not including title and reference pages)