[anigbrowl]

Benford's law is surprisingly effective in detecting unnatural patterns in data; I believe the IRS relies heavily on it. Then, alert eyes at the payment end, and encuragement to low-level clerical staff to cooperate in implicating their bosses or be left holding the bag. This works better for white-collar crime, since the criminal higher-ups are that much less likely to successfully put out a hit on persons who informed against them, though sometimes not for lack of trying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Benford%27s_law

[TazeTSchnitzel]

> https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Benford%27s_law

Now that is a weird Wikipedia URL. The normal one's /wiki/Pagename, and you sometimes see /w/index.php?title=Pagename, but /?title=Pagename? What produced that?

[newman314]

I wonder this is applied to find bad actors in the financial sector...

[dbarlett]

The FDIC has long recommended [1] mandatory vacation blocks as a fraud-detection tool:

    It is the FDIC's goal that all banks have a vacation policy which provides
    that active officers and employees be absent from their duties for an
    uninterrupted period of not less than two consecutive weeks. Such a policy
    is considered an important internal safeguard largely because of the fact
    that perpetration of an embezzlement of any substantial size usually
    requires the constant presence of the embezzler in order to manipulate
    records, respond to inquiries from customers or other employees, and
    otherwise prevent detection.

The idea has spread in recent years [2].

[1] https://www.fdic.gov/news/news/financial/1995/fil9552.html

[2] http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/easy-street/credi...

[dopeboy]

Yep - don't know about the rest but my former employer, Morgan Stanley, has a mandatory vacation policy (MVP) in place. You must take two consecutive weeks off per year.