Keyword analysis for spotting fraud

[Nords]

Those wild-eyed, hard-partyin' investigators at the FBI and Ernst & Young have teamed up to help us tweak our fraud-spotting skills.
Ernst & Young email keyword analysis identifies fraudsters

Next time you're poring over terabytes of corporate e-mail to detect evil-doers, try these keywords:
Cover up
Write off
Illegal
Failed investment
Nobody will find out
Grey area
They owe it to me
Do not volunteer information
Not ethical
Off the books
Backdate
No inspection
Pull earnings forward
Special fees
Friendly payments

Fraud is common where there is a combination of pressure, rationalisation and opportunity, researchers found.
The software revealed common phrases in email conversations where rogue employees are under pressure include “not comfortable”, “want no part of this”, “don’t leave a trail’ and “make the number”.
Conversations involving rationalisation include “told me to”, “not hurting anyone”, “won’t miss it" and “fix it later”.
Language associated with opportunity includes “off the books”, "off balance sheet transactions” or “pull earnings forward”.
The anti-fraud software also scans for "out of band" events such as “call my mobile” or “come by my office”, suggesting the writer does not want to be overheard.

Of course a wily fraudster would promptly incorporate all of those phrases into their e-mail signature, completely polluting the agency's detection efforts through gazillions of hits.

I can only imagine what Google (and the FBI, and Ernst & Young) will do when they realize that those keywords are now stored on a website about early retirement...

 

[Htown Harry]

Here's a fun project for one of you already retired. Test some of the keywords here:
Enron Email Dataset

This dataset was collected and prepared by the CALO Project (A Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes). It contains data from about 150 users, mostly senior management of Enron, organized into folders. The corpus contains a total of about 0.5M messages.

 

[donheff]

I can only imagine what Google (and the FBI, and Ernst & Young) will do when they realize that those keywords are now stored on a website about early retirement...

Maybe they will just focus in on the poster - are you audit proof?

 

[Nords]

Maybe they will just focus in on the poster - are you audit proof?

I have nothing to cover up or write off.
It's not illegal.
I have failed investments.
Nobody will find out.
It's a grey area.
They owe it to me.
I do not volunteer information.
Nobody can say that I'm not ethical or off the books.
I don't backdate things.
So far there's been no inspection.
I don't have to pull earnings forward or pay special fees.
But I'm willing to make friendly payments!

 

[REWahoo]

I have nothing to cover up or write off.
It's not illegal.
I have failed investments.
Nobody will find out.
It's a grey area.
They owe it to me.
I do not volunteer information.
Nobody can say that I'm not ethical or off the books.
I don't backdate things.
So far there's been no inspection.
I don't have to pull earnings forward or pay special fees.
But I'm willing to make friendly payments!

Say "Hi!" to the nice investigators....