The CDS Training

When divorcing parties and their lawyers think the other side is hiding assets, there are a number of ways to go that can involve hiring outside experts. If a spouse thinks money is missing, the first thought can be to hire a forensic accountant, while others move right to an investigator to comb the world for assets. 

This talk will help lawyers decide which is the appropriate expert to hire and when. Sometimes, forensic accountants and investigators perform complementary functions.  There will also be plenty of tips about how parties on a tight budget can do some of their own research.  

Learning Objectives

• When to start with an investigator, when to start with a forensic accountant, and when you may need both (and in what order).
• Some of the key skills employed by both kinds of professionals with useful examples employable right away.
• Not every client has a big budget. This talk will demonstrate ways to save money by doing some of the easier public record searching yourself, and by using Tracy’s Divorce Money Guide. 

Presenters: Philip Segal & Tracy Coenen

Philip Segal opened Charles Griffin Intelligence in 2009, specializing in complex financial investigations, and has worked as an investigator since 2006.  

Before that, he worked for 19 years as a journalist in India, and Pakistan, and ran NBC’s Mexico City bureau. He covered Parliament in Canada and then became a finance specialist in Asia (lastly as Finance Editor at the Asian Wall Street Journal). He won a fellowship to Yale Law School, and graduated with a JD from Cardozo. He was admitted to practice law in New York in 2007 and maintains his law license there. 

Segal was an adjunct law professor in Fact Investigation at Cardozo Law School for three years and has spoken to bar associations all over the country on the topics of asset searching, ethics, and general investigation.  

He is the author of The Art of Fact Investigation: Creative Thinking in the Age of Information Overload and has written more than a dozen articles for law journals and other legal publications on how to investigate ethically. 

His firm maintains two blogs, The Divorce Asset Hunter and The Ethical Investigator. He lives with his family in New York City. 

email: [email protected]

Tracy Coenen, CPA, CFF of Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting has spent more than 25 years investigating fraud. Her educational background includes an Honors Bachelor of Arts in Criminology and Law Studies and a Master of Business Administration, both from Marquette University. Tracy is a Certified Public Accountant and holds the designations Certified in Financial Forensics and Master Analyst in Financial Forensics. 

She has personally completed more than 500 forensic accounting engagements in a wide variety of industries, including cases of embezzlement, financial statement fraud, investment fraud, divorce, and insurance fraud. Tracy has also been named an expert witness in numerous cases involving damage calculations, commercial contract disputes, shareholder disputes, and criminal defense, and has testified more than 90 times. 

Tracy has been an adjunct instructor at Marquette University, an adjunct professor at Concordia University, an adjunct faculty member for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), and a faculty member for the National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts (NACVA). She is the author of three books, Expert Fraud Investigation: A Step-by-Step Guide, Essentials of Corporate Fraud, and Lifestyle Analysis in Divorce Cases: Investigating Spending and Finding Hidden Income and Assets. 

Email:  [email protected]