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First Up To Sup

by msecadm4921

In what is perhaps best described as an occasional series, Professional Security lunches with a reader. First up to sup with Mark Rowe was fraud consultant and investigator, speaker and author Mike Comer.

From his books that have got rave reviews over the years in these pages, you could imagine that Mike Comer is a sharp-tongued, cynical person. Certainly, to quote from his latest book Deception at Work: Investigating and Countering Lies and Fraud Strategies, he does not like liars and frauds, for sure. Nor does he like lawyers, readers of The Independent, politicians … about the only thing he has a good word for is golf. He does like golf. Professional Security took care to get on the right side of Mike at once by giving him as a gift a box of golf tees that came from a conference … and had the name of the organiser on the side of each tee.

Telling the truth

To tell the truth (and talking to the author of Deception at Work, what else can you do?!) Mike is a much nicer chap than you might think from reading his books. He comes from Birmingham, though he lives down south; he started in HM Customs in 1963. A family man, he plainly enjoys having grandchildren.

Sympathy for the dishonest

I most wanted to ask Mike: as his work is based on investigating wrong-doers, and recovering their millions, you would think that he has least time for the dishonest. Yet in his books on how to interview a suspect, he speaks of how to get at the ‘deep truth’ by building rapport with the person, showing sympathy. (To quote a couple of typically pithy remarks from his latest book: “If you can’t understand people, don’t interview them. If you can’t become a nurturing parent, you will never get to the deep truth.”) How come the hard-nosed investigator shows emotional sympathy? In a word, Mike replies that it’s a pretense.

Planned thinking

But it’s a pretense that to work has to be believable. I chip in with the Aesop fable of how the sun and the wind competed to make a man take his coat off. Trying first, the wind blew harder and harder only for the man to hold his coat tighter. Next, the sun shone, and the man took it off. In other words, a blunt, table-banging approach by an investigator will only make a suspect clam up. Mike is something of a thinker and makes tools of theories like transactional analysis (for getting results in interviews) and scientific content analysis, SCAN, for checking witness statements. His consultancy website www.cobasco.com mentions that Mike has worked with thinker Edward de Bono ‘on a strategic project to fundamentally reappraise the way businesses manage operational risks’. Mike praises Mindjet, ‘software for brainstorming and planning’, that he says he uses in fraud projects. In Deception at Work Mike uses their Mind Maps, that you can down-load on trial at www.mindjet.com He says: “I think it’s fantastic, I think it’s the best piece of software I have ever seen. It’s just so simple.”

Regulation creeps

One development that Mike dislikes is what he calls ‘regulatory creep’. Take data protection rules for example. He argues that after the Soham murder trial the Information Commissioner (who ‘ran for cover’) should have resigned, besides the Chief Constable of Humberside. Mike believes that when an organisation appoints a ‘data protection officer’, that person takes the chance to build an empire, and data protection is invoked far more than it need be. Mike’s view is that even the most sensitive data (job application details, CCTV) can be collected and retained, for crime prevention and investigation purposes, provided you register with the Information Commissioner, and meet other data protection principles – to do with who accesses that data, for instance.

Not a grey sheep

It is fair to say that you might expect a fraud investigator like any other professional or anyone in the asset protection line to be grey. And yes, Mike wears a suit, but his red tie had rows of white sheep – and one black one. That Mike can be outspoken, playful even, and be capable at his job, plus a fine communicator, makes his books stand out. As he remarks disarmingly, over the years he has only written the same book over and again; and Corporate Fraud (which has even been translated into Chinese) got its title more or less as a joke, because at the time the word ‘corporate’ was being applied to everything. He may be a self-confessed ‘old fart’ but his thoughts and methods evidently are more attuned to the front-line investigator than their (politically-correct?) managers who have to go by the rules, such as data protection, even if those rules are applied foolishly or plain wrongly. And the lunch? Noura, a Lebanese restaurant, London SW1, nearest Tube Victoria. Very nice, thank you Mike.

Deception at Work (480 pages, hardback, £95) and other books about fraud investigation by Mike Comer are published by Gower Publishing.

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