FBI Publishes Top Email Terms Used By Corporate Fraudsters

Qedward writes "Software developed by the FBI and Ernst & Young has revealed the most common words used in email conversations among employees engaged in corporate fraud. The software, which was developed using the knowledge gained from real life corporate fraud investigations, pinpoints and tracks common fraud phrases like 'cover up,' write off,' 'failed investment,' 'off the books,' 'nobody will find out' and 'grey area'. Expressions such as 'special fees' and 'friendly payments' are most common in bribery cases, while fears of getting caught are shown in phrases such as 'no inspection' and 'do not volunteer information.'"

Comments

Watch your words...

[BeerCat]

"So, this new range of paints is a grey area - neither black nor white. But if you spill any, while painting the library, make sure you keep it off the books. Hang on, there's someone knocking at the door..."

Re:Watch your words...

[AK Marc]

If you are going to paint in the library, make sure to cover up the books. If there is an accident, make sure there is no inspection, and try to avoid special fees for cleanup.

Re:Watch your words...

[Zouden]

This paint is terrible! It's a totally failed investment. I better get some new paint and cover up these splotches quickly so no one finds out.

Re:Watch your words...

[ArsenneLupin]

More seriously, "cover up" and "grey area" can also happen in conversations about an event by a third party (which is in the news, or speculation about what the higher ups in the company might be doing, etc.). They do not necessarily imply involvment of the 2 parties talking. Other terms, such as "failed investment" might happen innocently among project manager, even if the failure was not fraudulent. Expect lots of false positives.

Some other terms ("special fees", "friendly payments", are more telling. Or rather: "were mor telling", until publication of this news item. Now they've been added to the vernacular of conspiracy theorists gossiping about fictive bribery scandals that their bosses might, or might not be involved...

Re:Watch your words...

[wierd_w]

Sadly, several important documents were irreparably damaged by improper regulatory activities which resulted in many important books being cooked, quite literally, by being placed too near to the old radiator style heating systems in the library.

When asked why no-one was notified about important documents being improperly handled like this, many library employees said it was standard operating proceedure to not reveal additional information to internal management, and that it was simply a case of inspectors not doing their jobs that the damage occured.

The library management has begun an internal investigation into the matter, but due to a recent computer mishap coupled with the removal of the obsolete paper copy card cataloge, a considerable amount of vital data was lost or deleted concerning which books the library actually owns, which ones are from inter-library exchange programs, and which ones are missing and unaccounted for.

At the current rate, it is likely that no one will ever find out the true extent of the damages, so disciplinary measures are unlikely to manifest any time soon. Most employees interviewed simply expect a standard "slap on the wrist", followed by business as usual.

Re:Watch your words...

[aldousd666]

They're not auto-matic indictments, they're just keywords to narrow things down when say... you have a tarball of a bazillion emails from wikileaks uploaded to some bitttorrent site. (Yes, I mean for you, not the government to use, it was an example.) Still, one wonders what the FBI, who produced the list, has on their keyword list "warrantless" "we dont need a judge" "wiretap" "domestic spying" "naw, dont' bother getting a warrant" "security letter."

Re:Watch your words...

[Fishead]

New hobby... trolling the FBI / corporate security with innocent usage of suspicious phrases.

My new years resolution is now to use a minimum of one of these phrases in every email I send using the company email system for the year 2013. My employer is large enough that they most certainly use this sort of filtering.

Heck... they're probably tracking my Slashdot account... Hey guys... just kidding!

Re:Watch your words...

[Luckyo]

I take it you never worked in any kind of monitoring and enforcement. In reality, what grabs your attention (in addition to user reports) is the certain known patterns which give you a starting point from which to investigate.

I did some of investigating certain port scan patterns back when I was admin on a university campus. About 95% of people doing it were innocent of any wrongdoing, usually gamers with games that did massively overly broad LAN IP/port scanning searching for other players running the same game. About 95% of those who weren't were just starting script kiddies, and catching them in act early let me let them off with a slap on the wrist and no real damage to them or other people. Just young nerds who got their "oh my god 10mbps network" back in POTS modem age, saw another couple of hundred clueless people on the same network and figured they could root their unsecured windows machines to pump up their directconnect hub shares.

And then there were two people I got who were seriously trying to search for vulnerabilities and install trojans on computers of others people for much worse reasons, including one asshole who was actively trying (and succeeding in some cases) to access email accounts and other personal data of young female students to better harass them in real life. These two were banned from campus network and none of those two would have been caught that early in act (if at all), if it were for those of us volunteering as admins following up on certain usage patterns.

FBI is giving out certain usage patterns associated with certain kind of crime. I can very much envision this being incorporated into some sort of workplace monitoring scheme on the email server which will have about the same kind of accuracy. But it gives a starting point from which to look at, and nothing more. For example, your spam, while it would certainly attract attention, would pretty much immediately be disgarded as "not what we're looking for" for obvious reasons, because while it does meet the criteria for the starting point, it's also obviously not what any enforcer would be looking for.

Reporting a crime requires crime that was actually perpetrated, and you wanting to report it. In many cases, things can be managed within company/organization without having to involve actual law enforcement with far lesser consequences for all parties involved.

Irony

[boundary]

I wonder if E&Y used this when they were auditing Lehman Brothers...

Re:Irony

[dkleinsc]

(3) You won't find many accountants on slashdot since they tend not to be among the intellectually/technologically curious types in my experience.

Ah yes, this old problem again:
Counsellor: Well I now have the results here of the interviews and the aptitude tests that you took last week, and from them we've built up a pretty clear picture of the sort of person that you are. And I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that the ideal job for you is chartered accountancy.
Anchovy: But I am a chartered accountant.
Counsellor: Jolly good. Well back to the office with you then.
Anchovy: No! No! No! You don't understand. I've been a chartered accountant for the last twenty years. I want a new job. Something exciting that will let me live.
Counsellor: Well chartered accountancy is rather exciting isn't it?
Anchovy: Exciting? No it's not. It's dull. Dull. Dull. My God it's dull, it's so desperately dull and tedious and stuffy and boring and des-per-ate-ly DULL.
Counsellor: Well, er, yes Mr Anchovy, but you see your report here says that you are an extremely dull person. You see, our experts describe you as an appallingly dull fellow, unimaginative, timid, lacking in initiative, spineless, easily dominated, no sense of humour, tedious company and irrepressibly drab and awful. And whereas in most professions these would be considerable drawbacks, in chartered accountancy they are a positive boon.

Re:Irony

[ryzvonusef]

(3) You won't find many accountants on slashdot since they tend not to be among the intellectually/technologically curious types in my experience.

HEY! I exist, darn it! :D

But never mind me, I once found a Chartered Accountant (British Variety, ICAEW I reckon) who actually gave me some very insightful pointers on the working of the british tax system, and he was masquerading as an AC! So we do prowl on Slashdot ;p

----

I won't comment on the relative merits of various accountancy qualifications, partly because that's a pissing match on the level of vi vs emacs (nano rules, bitches!) and partly because I have already done so in the past, it's back there somewhere in my comment history (I recall using cake as analogy...)

However, for the slashdotteurs who have little understanding of the terminology, I *will* provide some detailed info on the reasonable assurance bit, to help clarify and placate those who might assume auditing to be mere quackery (rest assured we are no ducks, though I give no assurance we are *not* geese...)

Basically (and to grossly simplify) Audit is merely one of many *Assurance engagement*. An assurance engagement is, again to simplify, where a professional gives his opinion (the "assurance") on something.

Professionals are people who *ought to know better* about a certain item; this is not just your uncle Joe who came along on your hunt to buy a jalopy, this is mechanic X who deals with cars, and knows (or at least, *ought* to know) a lemon when he sees one.

Thus a mechanic might give you assurance that the car you are buying is road-worthy, a property inspector might give assurance that the house is structurally sound etc...

Similarly, auditors assure shareholders that the financial statements are *true and fair*. (Yes, *true* and *fair* are two separate qualities.)

But here is the deal; most of the folks here are likely to be computer programmers, right? You know that programs run for thousands of lines of code, and that, especially with a collaboration work, you can't be sure that *every single line* of code is both correct and necessary. But as long as shit works, it gives 1+1=2, and doesn't fry the computer whenever it runs, you ship, right?

Same is the deal here. You can't be 100% sure in any sort of assurance engagement, but as long as it's *mostly* correct, and falls within an acceptable error range, no one minds the occasional odd or end.

This is called "reasonable assurance". Auditors do NOT provide "absolute assurance", because they cannot possibly insure that 100% of accounts are true and fair (can you imagine counting every single screw to ensure the count is correct?); rather they provide "assurance that statements are *reasonably* fair", meaning things work, and the company will at least run for another 12 months(which is what's meant by "going concern"), after which we will conduct another audit.

(side note, there is another one, called "limited assurance", where auditors only give assurance on a limited scale, a bit like the mechanic only insuring that the engine and transmission work, and that the brakes and body is not his responsibility...)

Our standard, our error of margin, is called "materiality". Materiality is the difference between loosing a 12-pack of pencils and a jumbo jet; one is a minor annoyance, the other could sink a company. There are guidelines for how to set materiality levels, something like a certain small percentage of revenue or assets.

As long as the errors on the financial statements are *not* material (i.e. errors amount to something three notepads, half a CD spindle and a stapler missing), we will issue a "reasonable assurance" that statements are "true and fair", even though they are not, because in the grand scheme of things, a lost stapler is not exactly likely to sink the company, nor will the shareholders be amused to learn that we delayed approving statements (and their dividends!) by three months simply to hunt down some bits of stationery.

And now you know.

Sorta like this?

[ArcadeNut]

I know this is a grey area, and this may sound like a cover up, but we need to keep this failed investment off the books or do a write off. Nobody will find out.

Duh

[1u3hr]

Any idiot that SENDS AN EMAIL from his corporate account discussing a fraud, using whatever phrases, deserves to get caught. What the fuck does "Off the books" mean if not "DON'T WRITE ANYTHING DOWN".

Re:Duh

[Hentes]

Once corporate people discover encryption, we will be doomed.

Nah, the warez people have got this

[Valacosa]

"I know this is a g2ey 4r34, and this may sound like a c0\/er up, but we need to keep this f41led inv3stment off the b00ks or do a \/\/rite off. N0b0dy will find ou7."

all sounds pretty innocuous to me---

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that how investment bankers talk all the time?

Re:all sounds pretty innocuous to me---

[Anonymous Coward]

Investment bankers committing fraud are like kids pissing in the public swimming pool. As long as they're being discrete about it, the general public happily ignores the inevitability that its going on all around us all the time.

Re:all sounds pretty innocuous to me---

[alci63]

Why fraud when it is so simple to be perfectly legal in all these tax havens ?

Re:Other reasons....

[ArsenneLupin]

What? Does the secretary charge "special fees" and "friendly payments" for her "services"? She isn't moonlighting near the train station is she?

Write off

[Meneth]

Obligatory.

Re:What are top terms used by GOVERNMENT fraudster

[Pseudonym Authority]

Being flamed on the internet for your sweeping generalizations and moronic declarations provided without argument does not qualify as suffering.

I am puzzled

[drolli]

Iff you ever do something within the grey area, then do so without witnesses. Leaving an email trail that somthing is done in "the gray area" to "keep things of the books" is pretty much the opposite. It is very likley that reacting to such emails takes a misbooking or a thing for which you can at worst get fired straight to a criminal level.

I for my part always walk away in business if somebody suggest me things in "the gray area". If i am somehow related to that person i would point it out during in a few words during the coffee break.

If colleagues/boss engage in such things i also walk away. Gives me the option later to deny knowing about it in detail.

Don't Miss The Interesting Thing

[smpoole7]

Folks, this is the future. Computers can cross-reference and correlate things at lightning speeds and, once something approaching true artificial intelligence comes along, they'll be able to tell (with 99% accuracy) when someone is lying or telling the truth.

Recommended reading: the "Troy Rising" series by John Ringo. Even if you're not into the "oo-rah" and military stuff, Ringo's one of the best when it comes to realistic artificial intelligences. By the third book ("The Hot Gate") one of the protagonists has struck up a friendship with one of the fabber AIs. The AI admits as much to her, that it can not only tell when a human is lying, it can tell when that person is engaged in illegal activity, just by observing behavior.

In the Troy series, the privacy issues are handled with strict "protocols" (i.e., laws hard-coded into the programming) that govern AI behavior, but this is something that we're going to be facing in the future. What the FBI is doing here is going to look like the first crude steam locomotives compared to what AIs will be capable of in not too many years from now.

But how often are these terms used in other cases?

[JoshuaZ]

One obvious issue is how often these phrases show up in legitimate contexts. For example, "grey area" might be used frequently if one has a legal department. Not to volunteer information could easily be an instruction to an overly talkative employee or executive or the like to not blab about what the company is currently trying to do but hasn't gotten to work quite yet, or even has gotten to work and are industrial secrets. The last is a surprisingly common problem- a relative of my at one point was the COO of a baking company that was owned by someone who knew little to nothing about the industry (having inherited it) and on at least two occasions blabbed to people outside the company secrets about their manufacturing processes in apparent attempts to impress people. And that was in baking. In the circumstance my relative couldn't get the owner to stop (it is a bit hard to tell your boss to shut up) , but similar issues probably show up in a lot of industries.

So while some of these phrases seem obviously problematic (off the books is the most obvious one) I suspect that others could by themselves be often very innocent.

Most common phrase leading to malfeasance

[Quila]

"I accept this position as CEO."