Investigative Project Design:
This aspect of the three-part assignment will relate to the case you described. Assume you are a fraud examiner available for hire. Provide a discussion of the approach you, as an investigator, would use to look into a lead received about the possible fraud. The discussion should include several steps and indicate what documents you anticipate will be available and important during your investigation, whether interviews of individuals will be involved, who those individuals might be, and how you might analyze the collected information.
Assume you have received a general lead, but not all of the facts you laid out in your case presentation. Think through what type of actions may have occurred or might be taking place during your investigation. What records might be a good source to investigate the situation? Oral evidence through interview of individuals can be helpful, but documents are necessary to confirm oral evidence. How can you relate oral evidence to documents you expect to find?
This investigative design should be provided in prose, i.e. narrative writing. For those with audit background, this would be much like an audit program or the expected path you anticipate the investigation to take. The Investigative Design can be posted as a separate document to the Investigative Project Design assignment folder in LEO, or as a single document below your Case Presentation paragraphs. If you follow the latter approach, you will be able to view both the case description and your proposed investigative approach on the same document. This might be one and a half to two pages of narrative. When the submitted Investigative Design documents are reviewed, if posted with the case design, only the section about the investigation will be reviewed and graded.
A word of caution here! For the steps provided, there needs to be enough wording that a reader can understand what actions you plan to take during the investigation. This is about explaining to a supervisor how you plan to pursue this fraud. A supervisor, if approving your plan, would be committing your organization to spend the funds to support your efforts and the related expenses. Professionalism in this submission is important.
References and in-text citations are appropriate for this part of the three-part assignment. These sources fortify the merit of your approach to the case and often provide insights about the suitability of your approach to a specific case.
