Free ACFE CFE-Investigation Practice Exam with Questions & Answers | Set: 5

Benford’s Law applies to naturally occurring sets of numbers such asinvoice amounts, expense reports, and transaction data. The Fraud Examiners Manual shows Benford’s Law tests applied to vendor payments to detect anomalies like duplicate or inflated invoices. Telephone numbers, employee IDs, and bank account numbers areassigned numbersand do not follow Benford’s distribution, so they are unsuitable for this test.

The Manual emphasizes that interviews should be held where the respondent feelscomfortable and secure, not threatened:

“When possible, the interview should be held in a venue where the subject will feel comfortable and secure”.

Holding it in an uncomfortable setting is counterproductive and contrary to best practices.

TheFraud Examiners Manualspecifies:

“Fraud examinations should proceed from the general to the specific. That is, they should begin with general information that is known and then move to more specific details.”

Therefore, statementB is false, making it the correct answer.

Explanation: After alibis are diffused, suspects may become quiet, withdrawn, or even cry. This often indicates they are considering confession. At this point, the interviewer should present analternative question, forcing a choice between two answers that both imply guilt, thus leading toward a benchmark admission.

TheInternet archives(e.g., the Wayback Machine at archive.org) allow fraud examiners to retrieve prior versions of web pages, including deleted content such as company statements.

✅Answer: C. The internet archives

TheFraud Examiners Manualdefines double-negative questions as those containingtwo forms of negation in a single clause. They are confusing and “often suggest an answer opposite to the correct one.” The example given is almost identical to the question here:

“Didn’t you suspect that something wasn’t right?”.

Thus, Sylvia’s question is adouble-negative question, which should be avoided.

A key principle in fraud examinations is confidentiality. Fraud examiners must avoid tipping off the suspect, which could lead to destruction of evidence or flight. Measures include limiting discussions, informing only those with a legitimate need-to-know, and investigating discreetly.

Websites ending in “.onion” are only accessible via specialized browsers (e.g., Tor). The Fraud Examiner prep materials note:

“.onion sites are part of the dark web, which is distinct from the surface web and deep web. Accessing requires specialized browsers” (CFE Prep – Investigations).Thus, Jade must use a dark web browser.

The2014 International Fraud Examiners Manualprovides:

“Fraud examiners can use a correlation analysis to determine the relationships between different variables in raw data… For example, there should be a strong correlation between the independent and dependent variables because there is a direct relationship between them.Hotel costs should increase as the number of days travelled increases.”

CFE Prep – Investigationsechoes this:

“Using the correlation analysis function, fraud examiners can determine the relationships between different variables in the raw data. For example…Hotel costs should increase as the number of days travelled increases.”

Thus, the most useful analysis isCorrelation analysis.

The Fraud Examiners Manual makes clear that covert operations areextraordinary measuresthat require high skill and planning and should be used only when no other practical method is available. They carry significant risks, includingembarrassment, liability, and even injury or death. Therefore, covert operations should not be the first resort but instead follow conventional evidence-gathering efforts.