Check out my new video Series Fraud Busting: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up:
Need a transcript? Here ya go:
Hi I’m Traci Brown, the Fraud Busting Body Language Expert. Fraudsters are everywhere. And they go to some amazing lengths to get your money. My clients hire me so they can prevent loss. Sometimes they’ve already had millions slip through their fingers. But you don’t have to risk fraud loss! Nope. You can use the same tools as the FBI to spot fraud hidden in plain sight.
Here’s a true story from my You can’t make this stuff up file. This is just one story from one of my clients. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Um… I mean protect the guilty. I know. It’s ridiculous. But we gotta do it.
A German manufacturing plant for an American company burned to the ground. All the way down. The plant manager said that it had been hit by lightning. What a drag. (lightning strike footage)
But wait a minute. When the company auditors got there they noticed that the old equipment that had been inventoried in the scrap yard just a year before had been moved into the plant and burned along with everything else. That’s suspicious. Why would anyone spend resources to move scrap equipment…inside…where it would get in the way of daily operations?
And then the auditors went to the police and learned that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky the day of the fire. Hmmm.
The auditors did more investigation and learned that the plant manager had been squaking about wanting a new plant to the upper management for 3 years.
How do you think that exchange with him went when he was confronted? He denied it. But the signs of deception were screaming without him saying a word. Here’s just a one of them that you can use in your life:
Shift in behavior. The #1 thing that our law enforcement looks for to indicate deception is a shift in baseline behavior. There’s no one sign that signals deception. It only takes a little bit of conversation with someone to get their baseline behavior. Ask them questions that nobody would lie about. Like what’s their name, and where they grew up. You know small talk. When the questions get a little more incriminating and their general pattern responses change-body language, tone and words. You know you’ve got someone who has something to hide.
He later admitted that he took matters into his own hands and burned the place down so he’d get a new plant! I’m all for taking matters into your own hands, but it seems like he took that ‘create your own destiny’ leadership training from that last motivational speaker just a little bit too far.
Here’s the thing. You want to look for at least 3 hot spots in a tight cluster (usually in the same sentence) to get a reliable read. Baseline behavior is just one of the things to look for. They’ll be more right here in future episodes of Fraud Busting.
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