Search
Program Calendar
Browse By Day
Search Tips
Virtual Exhibit Hall
Personal Schedule
Sign In
Conventional forensic techniques and research often focus on personal blame, while accepting current rules and systems of jurisprudence as a given. Accounting personalities are widely viewed as rule-followers. Our professional associations are reluctant to take a stand on issues of political, economic, or criminal justice while the academy pursues insular research programs that eschew sociological explanations and normative reasoning. This working paper looks at a Depression Era fraud case to explore systemic aspects of fraud. The paper argues that fraud is a social rather than an individual phenomenon. By failing to grapple with normative, ethical, and systemic issues that underlie social phenomena, the accounting academy inadvertently supports the status quo as the best of all possible worlds.