Sage Investigations; Critical, inside information to help you prevail when dealing with the IRS

OCTOBER 2014

In This Issue

Preparation for an Estate

12 Top Tips to Reduce Employee Theft

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"It is always right to detect a fraud and to perceive a folly; but it is very often wrong to expose either. A man of business should always have his eyes open, but most often seem to have them shut."

- Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, 4th Earl

The goal of this e-newsletter is to provide you critical, inside information that will help you prevail when defending an IRS criminal case. We will do this by sharing the knowledge we have from our 25+ years of experience as an IRS Special Agent.

We are grateful to have the opportunity to provide you this valuable information via our monthly e-newsletter and our unparalleled forensic accounting and investigative services.

We take special care to ensure the information we provide you in "The Beacon" is the latest and most current information available. In this edition, we have addressed How to Prepare for an Estate and 12 Top Tips to Reduce Employee Theft.

We want to write about topics that will assist you in prevailing with criminal IRS cases. Please e-mail us your topics of interest to Thebeacon@sageinvestigations.com.

We encourage you to share our e-newsletter with others in your sphere of influence.

Sincerely,

Edmond J. Martin

Principal, Chief Investigator
Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE)

Texas Certified Investigator (TCI)

Preparation for an Estate

Scenario:

A number of years ago a dominant sibling took over the operation of a business from the elderly founder of a company. This sibling has made some poor decisions and has allowed greed to enter his heart. What should the other siblings do to attempt to save the company from bankruptcy?

Based on my experience I recommend that the other family members first secure the services of a competent lawyer. They should then obtain power of attorney from the patriarch of the company, establish a board of directors and take control of the company from the dominant sibling. It will be necessary to remove the dominate sibling from the daily operation of the company. They may elect to allow the dominant sibling to retire to a comfortable life. A new strong leadership team including a CEO, CFO and COO must be established by the board of directors, and every effort should be made to correct the existing problems.

Family members must immediately conduct a thorough business analysis, specifically:

Click here to learn what to do...

12 Top Tips to Reduce Employee Theft

How to handle theft by employees and what to do to prevent theft in a small business setting.

President Ronald Reagan advised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at the arms control agreement that he would "trust but verify;" so should a small business owner do. As a small business owner you must establish a culture of constant vigilance against employee theft. Here are 12 top tips to help you prevent employee or partner theft:

Have company bank and credit card statements sent to your home or have a link emailed directly to you on a monthly basis. Review them on a regular basis. Even if you do not see anything unusual, ask questions of the employees handling accounts to let them know you are watching and to keep them on their toes
Require monthly reconciliations of all bank accounts and review them, looking for anomalies such as checks that do not clear or deposits that are long-term outstanding
Have your accountant review the internal controls of your business and suggest means to segregate duties

Read the rest of the tips...

About Us

Serving your needs is our priority.

At Sage Investigations we are dedicated to serving our clients nationally, to help them navigate the difficulties of dealing with the IRS, and other complex (forensic) financial fraud investigations both civil and criminal. By narrowing our focus to our primary strength of following the money, we steer our knowledge, efforts, and experience to financial issues. We help our clients propel their cases forward by assisting in the review, acquisition, and organization of financial records, evaluating the elements of their cases, and helping create winning strategies. Through the use of our proprietary advanced financial investigative technology we analyze complex financial data quickly, easily and efficiently, saving our client's time and money.

Sage handles all cases with altruism, professionalism, honesty, integrity, passion and respect. When you hire Sage, you hire a team of professionals with skill and knowledge that helps you have more effective solutions. We are innovative with our DIO cutting edge technology, and perform every investigation in an orderly and organized manner to develop a clear investigative roadmap and deliver a quality work product. The compass that guides us is strong leadership and accountability. Learn more...

P.O. Box 160161

Austin, TX 78716

Phone: 512-659-3179

Fax: 512-328-6878

Email: info@SageInvestigations.com

www.sageinvestigations.com

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