The former national program manager of the FBI ’s White Collar Crime Program will speak on”Catching Corporate Crooks: White Collar Crime and Forensic Accounting”at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24, in Room 458 of the West Virginia University College of Business and Economics.
Charles L.”Chuck”Owens will discuss methods forensic accountants use to gather evidence that they hope will lead to convictions of business people and others responsible for acts such as the Enron, Global Crossings and WorldCom scandals, which shook the national economy and brought down one of the”Big Five”accounting firms, Arthur Andersen, last summer.
He will also talk about major white collar crime problems the FBI has faced, including public corruption and health-care fraud and some of the agencys successes and how they were achieved. He will also discuss the new Sarbanes-Oxley law and how it will help to combat corporate crime.
Owens is now a senior executive with the litigation advisory services practice of Ernst&Young in Atlanta. He joined the company after a 25-year career with the FBI , where he served in a number of FBI field offices, including Philadelphia, Kansas City, Atlanta, Norfolk and Washington, D.C. From 1995-98, he was national program manager of the FBI s White Collar Crime Program, the bureaus largest criminal investigative program. As chief of the program, he had management responsibility for investigations and initiatives to combat fraud in health care, insurance, financial institutions, securities and bankruptcy, among others.
In 1994 and 1995, he was the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI s Atlanta field office. From 1998 until his retirement in 2001, he was the special agent in charge of the Norfolk Field Office, where he worked closely with senior U.S. military officials.
Owens is a certified public accountant and a recognized international expert on white collar crime matters. He is a graduate of the WVU College of Business and Economics and worked three years for two of the”Big Four”public accounting firms prior to joining the FBI .
He is appearing at WVU as part of the Acordia/Royal&SunAlliance Distinguished Lecture Series in B&E.