FINAN 6660 - Financial Fraud and other Scams and Shenanigans

Financial fraud has been, and continues to be, a significant drain on society's collective wealth and ethos. The purpose of this course are many: to trace the history of often repeated frauds, to review their Utah connections, to grasp the psychology of the victims, to discuss the ethics of the perpetrators, to examine the role of financial markets, to understand the costs to society of financial fraud, to study the responses of the law, regulation and the courts to such frauds, to investigate the reactions of the accounting and finance professions, to become better able to recognize fraud when confronted, and to know what actions to take in those circumstances. While serious in any environment, fraud seems especially egregious in periods of serious financial strain and seems unusually easy to detect during those times. This course will examine why.