Over the course of this semester, students will encounter often outlandish-but very
real-tales of those who commit financial crimes using many ruses, including
fraudulent shell companies and existing front companies. Regardless of their
techniques and schemes, one theme is prevalent: to investigate and prosecute these
crimes, you must combine puzzle solving skills, organizational techniques that allows
you to categorize and analyze information, research abilities and legal creativity.
To effectively build prosecutions against complex criminal activity, investigators
combine creative investigative strategies that work within the confines of the law,
often working closely with attorneys. These matters may arise in challenging
circumstances, which is very often the situation in the investigation of financial
crimes, regardless of whether the cases are brought through criminal or civil
enforcement.

One of my goals in this course is to provide students with a strong foundation to
allow them to understand the relevant legal and other governance principles
applicable to global financial crime and then apply what is learned about identifying,
investigating and combating those activities.

In this course, we will explore multi-faceted efforts used to protect the financial
integrity of private businesses and organizations from global financial crime. We will
focus on regulatory, investigative (by state actors and non-government investigative
bodies) and legal aspects of compliance with applicable laws and regulations. We will
review corporate governance, as well as US and international investigative and
prosecutorial agencies. We will also discuss the applicable judicial systems and laws.
We will also spend time considering the ethical and moral implications of the
underlying crimes, the purported harms, and the approaches used to prevent, mitigate
and punish the criminal activity.