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pmhandley's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
3.5
A worthwhile read just for the fact is it will give you red flags to look out for. I think it was a little repetitive and while I found the perp/whistleblower classifications interesting, they were a bit oversimplified in my mind. However, I can see why the classifications are useful from an educational standpoint.
joreadsbooks's review
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Content warnings: fraud, discussion of the Tuskegee Institute Syphilis Experiment
The title of this one is what caught me – fraud as a three billion dollar industry is absolutely bananas to me. It’s everywhere. This book doesn’t necessarily focus on the frauds as events, but it does zero in on the people at the heart of scams, the perpetrators, the victims, and the fraudsters themselves. An interesting look into the behavioral economics behind fraud and an empathetic look at all those involved and affected.
If you’re someone who wants snippets of different types of whistleblowers and the ways people react to their work, this is one to pick up.
The overview of each story is very superficial, but each one piqued my interest in that they contextualized the many bills and acts that affect how situations are fined and investigated today. Unfortunately, so much of the motivation behind fraud comes down to human nature and taking too many liberties when there is a lack of oversight, but Pope works to make the stories relatable because at any moment, one of her readers might be a perpetrator or a victim of fraud. Her stories are somewhat relatable, and, when they’re specific to larger situations, she tries to contextualize them for the reader.
Forensic accounting is a study I had never heard of before picking this up, and it’s definitely something I want to learn more about.
elderwoodreads's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
4.0
This is definitely more of an engaging textbook for a college course than it is a riveting non-fiction book. Luckily for me I am very interested in the subject matter so my attention was held even when Pope got into the more "textbook" sections. I think if this is subject matter you find really interesting it's a great audiobook to have on in the background, I definitely learned about some new cases and statistics I had not heard. If you are going into this expecting a fun non-fiction read, maybe skip it.