Fraud auditing is often described as searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Computer-assisted audit tools and techniques (CAATT) can make this type of search more feasible by enabling the examination of huge volumes of data in relatively little time. This volume introduces and describes the use of CAATT in fraud audit scenarios. While primarily intended to serve as a manual for practitioners, it has also been successfully used as a supplementary text in advanced fraud and forensic accounting courses, as explained in chapter 1. The book is organized around the Association of Fraud Examiners' "fraud tree." Each main chapter focuses on one type of fraud, providing a brief generic description of that scenario, followed by several real-life case studies, each one illustrated by an extensive compendium of the CAATT tests that were used for detecting it. For example, the chapter on fraudulent disbursements identifies 92 relevant CAATT tests that may be helpful for detecting this type of fraud. The final chapter illustrates the use of IDEA, a currently popular data analytics software package, with step-by-step instructions for performing several of the most common CAATT tests using this software. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals.

--F. A. Marino, independent scholar

Francis A. Marino

independent scholar