Forensics: Expert Guides and Resources

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.

Between 1969 and 1975, a series of brutal sexual homicides swept through the Pacific Northwest, Utah, and Colorado. The victims were strikingly similar in that each had dark hair that was parted down the middle. The suspected killer, a male, often wore a fake cast and feigned an injury, thus seeking his victims' help with some task.

If you like science and law enforcement, you can probably find a career niche in the field of forensics. One caveat: By definition, forensics deals with law enforcement, meaning that if you have a criminal record, you may as well look for another line of work. Criminalist Criminalist is a modern term that encompasses workers in many fields of forensic science, but it most often refers to crime scene and crime lab workers.

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.

If you don't know what you're looking for, finding it is nearly impossible. Profiling, or looking at evidence and making a best guess as to the type of individual who would commit the crime in question, helps investigators get a firm grasp on whom it is they're trying to track down. The profiler, usually a specially trained FBI agent,looks at the crime scene, autopsy data, victim, and likely precrime and postcrime behaviors of the killer to make this assessment.

Solving crime means finding out whodunit, so forensic scientists have long searched for ways of absolutely identifying individuals from materials left at a crime scene. The first discovery that provided positive proof was fingerprints, which are absolutely individual. No two people share the same prints, so fingerprinting became and remains an extremely powerful forensic tool.