The Business Council will offer a new series of half-day seminars designed to help businesses detect and prevent accounting fraud.

The seminars will be offered March 30 and April 1, 6, and 7 in Albany, Poughkeepsie, Buffalo, and Syracuse, respectively. Regional chambers and businesses associations are co-sponsoring the events.

The seminars will be conducted by Chris Rosetti, an accounting fraud specialist from the accounting firm of Bollam, Sheedy, Torani and Co. of Albany.

Three of the half-day programs will run from 8:45 a.m until noon, with registration beginning at 8 a.m. The Poughkeepsie seminar will begin at noon and concluded at 4 p.m.

The training session will focus on various fraud schemes and how they work, how common fraud is, and how an organization can protect itself through a good fraud deterrence program.

Research on fraud shows that:

• The average organization loses an estimated $9 per day per employee or approximately $3,300 a year.
  
  
• Most frauds occur in organizations with 100 or fewer employees, and they are often committed by a trusted employee.
  
  
• Most frauds are discovered by accident, and usually after significant assets have been misappropriated.

Rosetti has more than 19 years of diversified accounting/auditing and investigative responsibilities. He is a CPA, a certified fraud specialist, and certified fraud examiner. His specialties include forensic analysis of financial documents and developing ethics policies and/or codes of conduct for organizations.

The fee for the seminar is $125 for Business Council members and $175 for others. For additional information, visit www.bcnys.org/whatsnew/events/acctfraud.htm.