okay. How I got here. Uh uh. The way I got here really wasn't something that I consciously selected. My field is forensic accounting, and ah, I do a lot of did a lot of Receivership work as well as different weight color front investigations, and it more selective may than me selecting it. And, uh, my background waas basically I had four educations is the way I look at it. Uh, the 1st 1 was 12 years of Catholic school, and I didn't really appreciate it while I was going there, But, uh uh, when I got out of school, I realized the quality of the education that I did get another part of my education was, uh, in my grandfather's restaurant. Hey, had a restaurant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it was a very popular restaurant. And, uh, uh, he pretty much, uh, taught me different things in the business. And one of the things that, uh, card one day when we were talking is that he said that all bartender steel and that you can't keep a bartender more than three years because by that time they were stealing too much, and I looked at him and I said. Well, uh, if you don't keep a bartender more than three years, uh, Joe's been here longer than that. And and I says, How long's job in working for you? And he says All about nine years. And I said, So how does that fit with your three year will roll? And I says, Well, you tell me that the Joe doesn't steal and he says, No, Joe steals And I said, Okay, I said, So I'd inter firearm after three years. Well, there's other considerations. He says. Jos a good draw. He has a lot of followers, and he has a great personality behind the bar. And besides that, he doesn't steal too much. And, uh, I said so you know, Joe steals and you know how much he steals. And he says, Yes, I know how much he steals. And, uh, hey says, Watch him, he says. He says, Hey, says you watch what show if you can figure out how he's stealing. As I watched Joe, we said we were sit back in the restaurant area and I was looking up at the bar and I'm watching Joe and he says, Hey says Okay, Ah, much him for a while, and I did after Wallace's. Okay, how do you think he's doing it? I said, Well, I notice sometimes when he rings up a sale, he rings it up, is no sale, and he is in very good, he says. That's one of the ways he does it. And I says Other times he never shuts the cash register drawer. He just makes change and, you know, puts the money in and takes the money out. And he says that that's another way that aced on it. Hey, says, uh, eso you pretty much figured out how Joe keeps track of it. Hey said, That's really good And I said, So do you know how much he steals this? Oh, yeah, hey, says That's really easy, Andi, I said, Okay, how do you know how much its dealings? We'll just watch him watch suit, what's what he's doing? And, uh, I watched show for a while, and he says we have figured out how he's keeping track of how much he steals. And I said, Well, ah, why does he have to really keep track of how much he's stealing, he says. Well, you know what the end of a shift. Yes, the balance out against the cash register tape. And, uh, he has to know how much to actually take out of the till at the end of his shift. It's OK, so I watch some more. So confer, you're not, he says. OK, says, is that help you with this one? He says, Watch what Joe's doing And I said, Okay, and I said, Hey, says you just you just talk through it. What's he doing? I said, Well, I noticed that when he's not working, he cleans shot glasses. And I said, Uh, he said, Well, why is he cleaning shut classes? All the shot glasses up there clean? Yeah, and he's just So tell me exactly what he's doing. I said, Well, he picks up a shot glass from the right hand side and he cleans it puts it on the left hand side, he says. Why is he doing? Why's he put him on this left hand side of, you know, once on a writer clean and the one now and left or double plane? Isis, he says. Does he ever pour a shot from the ones on the left hand side. Then I watched for a while and I said No, it's always from the right hand side and he says, and, uh, he says, And Joe Stack and those the shot glasses on the left hand side did he cleans and I said, Yeah, and I says, Yeah, he's got a pretty nice pyramid building there And he said Yes. He says that each one of those shot glasses represents a dollar that he's stolen. And so at the end of the day, at the end of a shift has to do is count the shot glasses, and he knows exactly how much to take out of the register. And so he says, If somebody is going to steal and they're gonna be good at stealing like that in a retail situation, they have to keep track of how much they're stealing, he says. The second thing is is almost always. They steal in round dollar amounts because it's so much easier to keep track of, he says. So each shut last represents a bower. Joe only steals in denominations of dollars, not never pennies just dollars. So if he's gonna under ring a sale, if it's a 3 50 drink he's gonna under ring it, he's gonna ring it up is to 50. And so that was my first lesson in, uh and stealing. I came back in a few days later. They have, ah, dinner at his restaurant and because I want to watch Joe again because I knew Joe would be working and Joe was gone, and I said, Where's Joey? Is supposed to be working. So I fired him and I said, Why did he steal too much? He says no. But he committed an unpardonable sin, and I says, And what's that? He says he stole from a customer? He says that that I will not tolerate from anyone. And Hey said that. And I said, How do you know that he stole from a customer? Where you here? He says, No, I wasn't here is that I was gone when that happened, I said, So how do you know this is where you can hire people that will come in and shop your employees? And he says, I hired this guy, comes in the E. Says that the bar, Yes, some drinks. He does like he's drunk and doesn't know what he's doing. and he put a $20 bill on on the bar, and Joe gave him change for a 10. And he says that I can't tolerate And I said, So there's people you hired to come in under cover the check The honesty of your employees is Yeah, there's companies that do that, you know, that's their business. And he says periodically, I do that. And so from that we discussed different ways that other employees could steal. And the such as waitresses giving away ah, piece of pie for a bigger tip, uh, something extra that they don't put down on the on the meal ticket. And that's that's out of the waitresses typically do it. And I said, Well, what about what about your cook staff? I says, You check them anyway. He's Yeah, I go through the garbage. These everyone's want to go out there and I go through the garbage. I'm gonna see what they're throwing away. And I said, What can you learn from the garbage is? You'd be surprised what you can learn from the garbage. Hey, says one of the things you can learn is spoiled food that they threw away. Uh, you can learn that maybe there's something that isn't prepared right? You can learn whether or not your portion sizes are too large for what's being thrown out. And so there's a lot you can you can learn from going through the garbage. And later on after I got into my my business, uh, I used garbage patrol when I picked up. Actually, I had this somebody dress up as a street person and go pick up the garbage out of the dumpster. And, uh, I went through all there and find all the business records and found the secret discount agreements that an insurance carrier had that wasn't being pay. It passed on to the insured, and it ended up in Uh, well, I sued him twice once was individually, I sued him, and the second time was a class action lawsuit for everybody that had an 80 20 policy but was really paying a lot more than 80% because of the secret discounts that the insurance company was getting. Ah, that's basically how I got my start there. But the, uh, or those two educations, another one that I had was when I started on in college, I started out in forestry and I left after in the middle of my second semester. I quit and went to work for four years at U S Steel. And then I went back to college. But during those four years I worked for in the data processing center of U. S. Steel and, uh, I got the greatest education that anybody could ever get in actual hands on account me Because over the course of that time, uh uh, the four years I was primarily accounts payable during the summers. I went back to work for him. The treasure of U. S. Steel at the time was my mentor. And when I came back in the summers while I was going to college, I learned every other system that U. S Steel had in their data. And Pittsburgh was the center for other data processing for the main company plus seven divisions. And so I learned every accounting system that U. S Steel had over the course of two summers. Uh, that was that was an invaluable one. And then I went back to college and in college when I learned was the technical reason for what I was doing what I learned how to physically dio I learned a background then the theory behind what I was doing when I was in college. So from an educational standpoint, that was the core of my education. Uh, and then that I worked for a couple of different government agencies, which was also a big help on the 2nd 1 was for the state of Arizona. I became their their director of regulation, and I was responsible for review of all the securities filings there, and so that Ben gave me the solid background. And then when I went out and worked on my own, I had that regulatory experience plus all the technical knowledge that I got in between working and the, uh, school And, uh, yeah, it set me up where, uh, people would come to me to ask me to do where rather than me going on soliciting where Ah, but 90% of the work over my career came in the former referrals, and it was based on their knowledge of my background from when I worked for the government. Or, you know, when I was out on my own, I didn't advertise. I didn't, uh, a network. I didn't do anything, really. It just came to May. People would call me rather than me calling them.

Ah, there is no such for the first thing you you have to understand about forensic accounting is it's It's great for somebody that believes I'm working themselves out of a job because they're not reading repeat engagements. You don't Uh uh you know, every frauds unique into itself that you're investigating and they come from various sources. You may get more than one job from one law for over time, and I worked with the number of law firms and they would refer various cases. May could be an embezzlement. One year. It could be some other type of fraud. And a lot of the work that I did was receiver ships where it was ugly divorce where there were substantial on assets and business breakup, those types of things. And then, uh ah, a lot of the medical practices where somebody on the inside was embezzling money. And, uh, from my experience, doctors were pretty much the most naive financially, from the standpoint of a group of people and them being vulnerable to embezzlement, I've seen a lot of embezzlement that occurred within medical practices. And, uh uh I mean, it got to the point where some of them were so bad. For example, one doctor didn't even know that his bookkeeper took out a $30,000 credit line on his American Express on, and I mean he and it was Max out. And he never even knew he never saw the bills. She handled everything and and, uh uh, it's a matter and it always comes down to a violation of trust. That's that's the core of any frogs, a violation of trust. But the, uh, duties ranged. I mean, if it's hard to my my job description for myself and my employees, whatever needed to be done whenever it needed to be done, it's real simple. I'm you don't have to write a book on it. It's whatever needs to be done when it needs to be done. And I didn't believe in ah, regular hours. Uh, I mean, there were times that I would work from early in the morning. You work 24 hours straight, especially at the start of a case. Uh, it's ah, let really labor intensive at the very beginning. Uh, then then you go into almost slow speed because then your time is really governed by the court system. and it's always hurry up and wait, and you get us much done as fast as you can. And then you sit away on a lot of times. What you're waiting on his documents to come in. And so there There's, I mean, and the truth is, your background, whatever your life experience is, plays a role in your ability to investigate. I mean, there's no work experience that's irrelevant. And I mean, I've had receiver ships that involved managing construction projects, car washes, many storage facilities. Ah, glass recycling facility. I mean, there's just the whole range, and basically my experience was getting involved in every aspect of it.

Uh, mostly I use, I would say primarily excel and, uh, access. And then there were some other programs that we used that are our data management programs. Early on, I developed my own in house data management system and, uh, the the idea waas that Ah ah, A small shop. A small one or two man law firm. You could help, uh, keep up with, uh, a big case and all the searches that you need. Do it in the hard documents you can do. Elektronik Lee. You can have that database when you're in a deposition and somebody could answer, and you could instantly look up and see what's related to his answer and whether or not as answer fits with the data. And so the idea was to make, uh, law firm, small law firms competitive with the big law firms that may have used 30 paralegals to search documents and early on what we were doing, where was scanning documents in the database and then ah, having those documents so that we could search on keywords, phrases, dates, and then we can do relational searches of the database where, for example, we could add, do a queria of every time I want to know Every time you and I had had correspondent and put it in date range whether by letter, by email, whatever form of communication and say I came back with 1000 times, we corresponded and I say, Well, that's kind off, uh, a lot. I want to narrow it. Done, uh, and I want a narrow it down to take that 1000 hits and say, Now I want to look for a key word in there. I want the to search to see every time we talked about Rhea location, and then it would, you know, maybe bring it down to 10. Now it's more manageable than Aiken go. Since we have everything based number, Aiken, go right to the document. And, you know, there may be a room full of binders with documents in them, thereby row by book number by Bates number range. And I go right to that book instead of going back through all the documents. I can go right to that book, right? That at page. And look at the document. I could do that for each document. And if I want that not look at the actual physical document. I can look at the document, pull the document up on my computer, and I can do that for each of the 15 that gave me the hit up. Uh, and I recognize the the importance of that early on. Others can programs that do the same thing that you're gonna you can buy off the shelf programs.