Overview of Forensic Accounting

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Introduction
What is forensic accounting one might ask? It has been on the rise lately and has been talked about for years, but do people really know what it is. Well look no more; you came to the right place. This paper will discuss the ends and outs of forensic accounting. For example, the certifications required to become one, the history of forensic accounting and many different types of crimes that forensic accounts handle.
Forensic accounting is an investigative style of accounting used to verify whether a single or company has occupied with any illegal financial movement (Forensic Accounting Online, 2013). It is used to detect fraudulent activity such as false insurance claims, embezzlement, bribery, tax evasion, etc. Since forensic accounting has grown many companies now have departments specifically for forensic accounts to work. Forensic accounting consists of two areas, litigation and investigation. The litigation support part of a forensic accountant's job involves figuring out the amount lost by parties in a legal dispute while the investigation area of the profession involves combining the abilities of both accountants and detectives (Winters, 2008). This will be discussed more about later in the paper.
History
If it wasn’t for criminals laundering money and shady mob bosses, forensic accounting would not be as popular as it is now. Forensic is derived from the Latin word forensis meaning “related to the courts”. Forensic accounting has been around for many decades. It originated in the 19th century and was used to detect tax evasion amongst businesses that attempted to hide earnings in bank accounts in multiple states. Nowadays, forensic accounting is happening more often because of the increase of fraud, use of t...

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