Private Investigations of White-Collar Crime Suspicions: A Qualitative Study of the Blame Game Hypothesis

Abstract

The activity of private investigations by fraud examiners is a business of lawyers, auditors and other professionals who investigate suspicions of financial crime by white-collar criminals. This article presents results from an empirical study of investigation reports. The available sample consists of 28 reports written mostly by auditing firms such as Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PwC. The blame game can occurs at two stages in a private investigation. First, the mandate formulated by a client may point investigators in a specific direction. Next, investigators sometimes suffer from a tunnel view of predetermined opinions. In the sample of 28 investigations reports, more than half of them involve potential blame game victims.