Chris Ekimov is a forensic accountant. One day, you got a call from a CEO who had discovered

something about the company's chief financial officer, and it wasn't good. It appears that he has

been taking money from the business inappropriately, and I'd like to understand how much and how it

happened. The company had been looking at its payroll numbers, and they noticed a

discrepancy. The budget for employee salaries and benefits was $3 million. And the actual spend that

year was $4.5 million. That's a 50% increase over budget, which you don't have to be

accountant to know. That's massive. And so the CFO, when questioned about it by the

CEO, didn't make up a story. He said, you know, I've been stealing from the company for three years.

Okay. And so the CEO is kind of gobsmacked, right, like anyone would be. You've trusted this guy.

He worked there for something like 15, 17 years.

Welcome to the show. I'm Dan Heath. This is what it's like to be. On each episode, we profile

somebody from a different profession. We chase our curiosity about what other people do at work

all day, every day. We try to walk in their shoes. Today we're

chatting with a forensic accountant, Chris Ekimov. We'll hear about a headmaster who stole

from his own students. We'll learn about what sorts of clues you look for when you're scouring

someone's records for evidence of fraud. And we'll hear how this wary outlook,

always being on the lookout for people lying or cheating, affects your perspective in everyday life.

I'm Dan Heath. Stay with us. So what is a forensic accountant exactly?

So I use the shorthand. An audit or general accounting

services are a mile wide and an inch deep. You're not looking at every single transaction,

but you're getting a general sense of how appropriate these transactions are. Forensic

accounting is the inverse. It is a mile deep, but only an inch wide. And that's because you're specifically

...