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Detecting and Preventing Sex Fraud Isn’t All That Different From Detecting and Preventing Financial Fraud

Welcome to the latest edition of Accumulated Deprecation, Greg Kyte's monthly column. Go here to read more of Greg's posts.
 
You're a CPA which basically makes you a sex god; a wrathful sex god, because when people think about having sex with you, they tend to say things like, "god damn it."
 
Not only did you immediately recognize the potential for double entendre when you learned about hot assets and exposure drafts, you also realized that if you draw a t-account just right, it looks like a penis. Nice work.
 
What you may not have realized is that your training on how to detect and prevent financial fraud is a transferable skill that has direct applications to sex, like discovering whether or not someone you're having sex with is having sex with someone who's not you.
 
A particularly helpful tool in this regard is the fraud triangle. The ACFE says that "three factors … must be present at the same time in order for an ordinary person to commit fraud: pressure, opportunity, and rationalization." Those same three factors must be present at the same time in order for an ordinary person to bump his or her uglies with uglies other than the uglies with which he or she has either implicitly or explicitly entered into an exclusive ugly-bumping agreement.
 
Pressure
The pressure component of the fraud triangle is often referred to as "motivation" or "incentive." For financial fraud, pressure can come from things like the inability to pay your bills, large bonuses based on financial performance, or being a greedy son of a bitch. When it comes to sex fraud, pressure is often referred to as "horniness" which can come from things like pheromones, the movie Magic Mike, or having a penis.
 
With financial fraud, pressure seems like an unnecessary component. Everyone wants more money. Sure, someone with a lot of stock options or a raging heroine addiction may be under intense pressure to cook the books or misappropriate assets, but everyone is motivated and feels pressure and has incentive to get more money. And we seldom if ever get a break from that. That's a tenant of economic theory: our economic wants are insatiable.
 
In contrast, libido can drop to zero. Picture your mom naked. See? Yours just went away. Can't do that with fraud. Everyone has their own list of boner-killers. Mine includes Schindler's List, Neil Diamond songs, and old people smell. By discovering and creatively introducing your lover's boner-killers at opportune times, you can drastically reduce the chance that they'll cheat on you. Probably because they'll dump you. And it's not cheating after they dump you.
 
Opportunity
When describing opportunity, the ACFE says:
The person must see some way he can use (abuse) his position of trust to solve his financial problem with a low probability of getting caught.
In relationships, women stereotypically have less motivation to cheat, and men stereotypically have less opportunity to cheat. If you happen to be both male and a CPA, your opportunity to cheat is generally assumed to be immaterial. But just like with financial fraud, opportunity will arise, no matter who your partner is -– or how much game they don't have.
 
Internal controls focus on eliminating opportunity, but even the best internal controls don't reduce the chance of fraud to zero. Chastity belts and Internal controls come with similar disclosures.
 
Rationalization
As human beings we have an innate need to view ourselves as good, honest, and ethical people, or as the ACFE puts it:
The fraudster must justify the crime to himself in a way that makes it an acceptable or justifiable act.
So must the cheater.
 
Rationalization gives the unfaithful partner a way to commit the act and explain it to himself and others in such a way that he doesn’t come off as a morally reprehensible human being. So if you've been a dick to your significant other, congratulations. You've given her the rationalization she needs to cheat on you. Chris Rock puts it this way:
You know what the crazy shit is? You cheated on your woman. She shouldn't trust you no more. But she does; eventually she does. But you know what happens now? Now you don't trust her. You cheated on her, now you don't trust her. What kind of ignorant shit is that?
 
You know what happened? You just fucked around on your woman. You know what happens when you fuck around on your woman? You just gave her a get some dick free card. And you never know when she's gonna cash it in.
So please remember: every time you're an asshole, you're increasing the rationalization component, making it more likely for your partner to cheat on you.
 
Or steal all your money.