As a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) of 30-plus years and retired federal agent, it is part of my job to educate the community and provide information that will help people identify scams and prevent them from losing their hard-earned money. The Sage Team has compiled...

Early on, the Texas Supreme Court established the basic principles of tracing separate property. Where separate and community funds were commingled in a bank account, it was considered impossible to segregate the funds.[1] In 1976 James D. Stewart adopted from Farrow...

It is nearing the end of 2022, and like every other year, fraud is the cases worked on by the Sage Team. The Sage Team has been hired to handle fraud cases by corporations, attorneys, and accounting departments. We saw a lot of occupational fraud throughout the year,...

Tracing Essentials If your client is contemplating marriage after the death of a spouse or divorce and the client was left with a high net worth, it is necessary to protect their separate property before their remarriage. It is best since you are marshaling the assets...

Business attorneys like yourself are always trying to help clients prevent fraud in their businesses. To prevent fraud, it is critical first to encourage your clients to develop a policy to deter fraud and make employees aware of the impact of fraud on the...

During the tax shelter years, individuals would invest in schemes to save money on federal income tax owed. As a result, scores of people lost money and became part of a con man's "sucker list." In early 2001, there was a fraud scheme in Las Vegas where sales...

Written by Edmond Martin, CFE, TBCI, and Daniel Fannin, CPA, CFE, CAMS – of Sage Investigations, LLC.  A retired individual and his wife divorced after more than 25 years of marriage. They sold their family home, and he received half of the proceeds totaling $175,000,...

Large corporations can be victims of unscrupulous employees that identify internal system weaknesses. On April 1, 2015, an expert witness report was rendered by Sage Investigations, LLC of Austin, Texas, in the civil matter, Cause No. 13-0107-C368 –Dell Inc., Dell...

The Texas Constitution, Article XVI, Sec. 15, defines Separate Property as all real and personal property of a spouse owned or claimed before marriage, and that was acquired afterward by gift, devise, or descent shall be the separate property of that spouse.[1] States...

All of the below best practices are implemented by Sage Investigations, LLC in the bank analyses and the tracing analyses through algorithms and DIO, a proprietary technology. Utilize technology to convert account activity from paper or PDF formats to a format that...