Erik Lie: Catching Cheats, Fraud Detection, and the Board’s Evolving Role

Nov 24, 2025

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(0:00) Intro

(1:30) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel

(2:16) Start of interview

(3:01) Erik's origin story

(6:10) His role at the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa.

(7:49) Exploring his book Catching Cheats

(9:39) About the field of forensic economics

(11:00) The Challenge of Private Market Data and Fraud *Reference to our Startup Litigation Digest

(16:24) Board Responsibilities in Fraud Detection

(19:03) Challenges for private company boards

(21:22) Insights and red flags from the Madoff Case

(26:30) Insider Trading and Its Challenges

(31:29) The Role of Whistleblowers in Fraud. Reference to E142 with Tyler Shultz and E130 with Mary Inman (whistleblower attorney)

(35:44) Cultural Perspectives on White-Collar Crime

(39:59) The Intersection of Vision and Fraud

(41:27) Fraud problems in academia

(44:00) The Impact of AI on Fraud Dynamics *suggested read: The Trillion Dollar Governance Reckonings

(49:46) The role of directors in the stock backdating scandals "they were happy beneficiaries"

(51:03) Books that have greatly influenced his life:

Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (1997)

(53:45) His mentors *discussion about the Norges Bank Investment Mgmt Fund ($2T AUM) and its ethical issues.

(56:23) Quotes that she thinks of often or lives her life by.

(57:10) An unusual habit or an absurd thing that she loves.

(58:08) The living person he most admires: Bill Gates.

Erik Lie is the Amelia Tippie Chair in Finance and Professor at the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. His new book, Catching Cheats: Everyday Forensics to Unmask Business Fraud, offers a compelling look at how forensic economics and data-driven analysis can help identify wrongdoing that remains hidden in plain sight.

You can follow Evan on social media at:

X: @evanepstein

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/

Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/

To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/

Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License