Most of the time, forensic accounting is used when someone commits fraud. For this reason, forensic accountants are often referred to as fraud investigators or fraud examiners. Fraud takes many forms, but no matter how you look at it, fraud is theft; it is profiting by deceit or trickery and involves the theft of funds or information or the use of someone's assets without permission.

Ever wonder just how prevalent various crimes are? Or about what you should do if you witness a crime? This Cheat Sheet covers that and more, such as how investigators approach a crime scene and the tools they bring to bear in their search for clues, as well as how the medical examiner or coroner determines the cause, mechanism, and manner of death.

At 3:40 a.m. on February 17, 1970, U.S. Army Captain Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald summoned military police (MPs) to his home at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. When the MPs arrived, they found Dr. MacDonald lying on his bedroom floor next to his wife, Colette. He wore only blue pajama bottoms. A matching pajama top lay across the chest of his wife, who had been brutally and repeatedly stabbed to death.

Crime is a common occurrence in the United States. The FBI maintains a database of all reported crimes throughout the country. It's called the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. During 2013, nearly 10 million criminal acts were reported. These crimes consisted of the categories and numbers shown in the following table.

Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh was an American hero. On May 20, 1927, the Lone Eagle, as he was known, became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic in his single-engine airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. Less than five years later, on the night of March 1, 1932, his son, Charles, Jr., was abducted from the second-floor nursery of his Hopewell, New Jersey, home.

Staging is when someone who's committed a crime attempts to make the scene look like something that it isn't. The most common staging scenario occurs when someone tries to make a murder look like a suicide or an accident. The suspect may move the body or clean certain areas. Say, for example, a husband strikes his wife in the head with a blunt object, killing her.

From the moment the first police officer arrives at the crime scene, he follows a strict set of procedural guidelines designed to protect him and everyone else who's present; guard evidence against damage, contamination, or loss; and document everything that occurs at the scene. Following these procedures and maintaining control of the scene until the crime-scene investigators arrive offer the best chance of getting the evidence needed to identify and convict the perpetrator.

Picture yourself being buried alive. People living prior to the 19th century had good reason to worry about such matters, because stethoscopes hadn't been invented, and determinations of death were more a guessing game than a scientific pursuit. A weak heartbeat meant you'd probably be pronounced dead — only to wake up while your body was being prepared for burial.