La Salle University's online Fraud and Forensic Accounting Certificate Program prepares students to be corporate leaders in fraud detection and prevention.
Our online Fraud and Forensic Accounting Certificate Program is a twelve-month graduate certificate program that prepares participants for careers in the exciting field of forensic accounting by providing them with skills and tools to both prevent fraud from occurring and discovering fraud after it has occurred. Topics include complex financial investigations, compliance and financial audits, money laundering, net worth analysis, the psychology of white-collar crime, financial statement fraud, and more.
Online learning at La Salle offers the same rigorous curriculum as face-to-face learning with increased flexibility for those juggling busy schedules. Courses will meet both asynchronously, using discussion boards, and synchronously, using programs that allow real-time chat and video or audio web conferencing to help you stay connected with your instructors and classmates.
The program consists of five courses:
- Fraud Examination: Principles and Practices
- Financial Statement Fraud
- Occupation Fraud and Abuse
- The Computer and Internet Fraud
- Fraud Detection and Prevention: Special Studies
An additional foundation course, Managerial and Financial Accounting, will be required of students without sufficient training or background in accounting.
View the course descriptions
Program Goals
- Master techniques necessary to detect, investigate, and deter fraud.
- Acquire helpful investigative practice aids, such as governmental and nongovernmental Web sites, sample interview questions, and checklists of symptoms for employee embezzlement and management fraud.
- Gain hands-on experience with software used in fraud detection.
- Understand the key differences in fraud-detection engagements versus external and internal audit engagements.
- Acquire the technical skills to perform symptomatic fraud auditing, also known as proactive vs. reactive fraud-specific auditing.
- Experience techniques used in data extraction/analysis in fraud detection.
- Become proficient in the types of investigative techniques and evidence.
- Understand the impact of internal controls in the fraud environment.
- Become able to identify the psychological and sociological factors that contribute to the perpetration of fraud.
- Become proficient in creative financial reporting through the misapplication of generally accepted accounting principles and fictitious and sham transactions.
- Gain knowledge of ethical behavior and standards of conduct.
- Learn the step-by-step guide to writing and defending a fraud investigative report.
