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APPLYING ADVANCED VERBAL TECHNIQUES TO

INTERROGATIONS AND INTERVIEWS

Far too many cases of serious fraud are irreparably compromised within the first 24 hours

because first responders fail to recognize the importance of initial exchanges in getting to the

“deep truth”—establishing the factual base of the current and associated cases beyond reasonable

doubt. This session will introduce key modules on interrogations and interviews with people in

possession of the “deep truth” who are reluctant to volunteer it.

You will learn how to:

Reframe the dynamics of interrogations and interviews in international investigations.

Apply psychologically proven techniques of persuasion to interrogations and interviews.

Eradicate misconceptions of the nature of empathy and rapport as well as admissions and

confessions.

Develop effective personal tools and techniques for conducting interrogations in difficult

international contexts.

Explain the VJtf interrogation and interview processes in detail.

MICHAEL COMER

Managing Director

Cobasco Group Limited

United Kingdom

Mike Comer is the managing director of Cobasco Group Limited, a community of anti-fraud and

compliance specialists, that works in mentoring relationships with clients to prevent, detect,

investigate, and recuperate from corporate fraud. Since 1979, he has worked with hundreds of

clients on a wide range of preventive assignments and successfully investigated scores of high-

profile frauds in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and North America. He was the founding

editor of the Computer Fraud and Security Bulletin, which he edited for eight years, and he has

written nine books on fraud, corruption, and forensic linguistics, including Corporate Fraud III,

Investigating Corporate Fraud, and An HR Guide to Workplace Fraud and Criminal Behaviour.

“Association of Certified Fraud Examiners,” “Certified Fraud Examiner,” “CFE,” “ACFE,” and the

ACFE Logo are trademarks owned by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, Inc. The contents of

this paper may not be transmitted, re-published, modified, reproduced, distributed, copied, or sold without

the prior consent of the author.

APPLYING ADVANCED VERBAL TECHNIQUES TO INTERROGATIONS AND INTERVIEWS

2015 ACFE European Fraud Conference ©2015 1

NOTES Preamble

This paper supports a presentation by Michael Comer of

Cobasco Group Limited for the 2015 European Fraud

Conference of the Association of Certified Fraud

Examiners to be held in London, 22–24 March 2015. The

conference includes a number of sessions on topics related

to this paper. It has been edited to avoid duplication and to

suggest alternative views.

The opinions expressed are those of the author and are

not necessarily endorsed by the ACFE.

Current Trends

Although there is extensive and mainly excellent U.S.

literature on interviewing suspects and witnesses, the

prevailing obsession—in most other countries and

especially the UK—is on low-intensity processes involving

“conversation management” or “an appropriately requested

free narrative.”

The Society of Forensic Interviewers (SOFI) states that:

“It does not support techniques that aim to secure a

confession, use rationalisation or

minimisation/maximisation to encourage the

interviewee to confess, or include any assumption of

guilt. We do not support interrogation techniques or

techniques that focus on detecting deception in an

interview.”

It makes you wonder what SOFI members might actually

achieve other than a bland narrative that merely parrots the

defence case. And what is so wrong with an interviewer

assuming a subject’s guilt if the evidence points that way?

One leading journal recently commented:



NOTES “It wasn’t an interrogation; it was a careers interview.

The police ended up looking like a sandal-wearing

convention of bleeding-heart liberals.”

The rationale given for low-intensity interviewing is that it

eliminates the risk of innocent people confessing, under

pressure from unscrupulous interrogators, to crimes they

had not committed. This can happen. But in commercial

cases, false confessions are unlikely and easily eliminated

by post-interview validation. Ironically, an entirely

different set of rules applies when a case comes before a

prosecutorial agency that commonly coerces confessions as

part of a plea-bargaining process. As a barrister

commented: “Yes, but they are lawyers!”

The evidence given to support the fixation on false

confessions is mainly apocryphal and inaccurate. However,

an excellent and thoroughly researched book—titled

Convicting the Innocent—by Brandon L. Garrett, Professor

of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law does

not include a single case where a false conviction for fraud

resulted from a misdirected interrogation. Interestingly, a

significant number of false convictions resulted from

witness evidence that had not been sufficiently validated by

the prosecution.

The trend towards low-intensity interviewing is promoted

mainly by left-leaning academics and defence lawyers and

to a large extent is self-serving. Firstly, for academics it

opens the door for lucrative training programs and

consulting assignments and from a lawyer’s perspective

contested litigation is always far more remunerative.

There is a highly revealing presentation on YouTube by

Professor James Duane of the Regent Law School and

a former defence attorney titled “Don’t Talk to Cops.”



NOTES The inference is that no one should ever speak to the

police except under the direction of their lawyers. How

self-serving is that? Never ask a barber if you need a

haircut.

However, careful examination of the clip makes it

abundantly clear that the advice is only relevant to

people who are guilty. It is overwhelmingly in the

interests of innocent subjects—especially in a

workplace context—to clear themselves at the earliest

opportunity rather than to incur legal costs and leave

themselves exposed to the whims of a prosecutorial

agency or a criminal trial.

The downside of ineffective interviewing is a failure to

clear innocent people until they have been dragged through

courts; it also allows villains to escape unpunished and

leads to protracted trials, massive legal fees, acquittals, and

other problems for victim organisations. It also puts

immense pressure on the criminal justice system. All of this

could have been avoided by effective and ethical

interrogations and interviews in the first instance.

Experience is unequivocal: the earlier in an

investigation that innocent people are cleared of

suspicion and skulduggers swayed to confess, the better.

Hoping that interview failures can be recovered—and the

deep truth established—through coercion at a plea

bargaining stage or in a criminal trial is a fallacy.

A senior lawyer recently stated: “it is not my job in

court to find the truth. It is to obtain a decision

favourable to my client.”

The recommendation for low-intensity interviews also

extends to those with witnesses. The UK Ministry of



NOTES Justice’s 300-page publication, Achieving Best Evidence in

Criminal Proceedings, recommends that:

Explanations for evidential inconsistencies should only

be sought where the inconsistency is significant … and

where there is no obvious explanation.

Witnesses should only be challenged directly over an

inconsistency in exceptional circumstances … and

when it is essential to do so.

A classic result of this appalling advice can be found in the

interviews conducted by the Leicestershire Police in April

2008 of “Tapas 7”—friends of the parents of Madeleine

McCann who tragically disappeared from a holiday villa in

Portugal a year earlier. In these interviews the three

detective constables—delegated with responsibility for one

of the most important cases in UK history—did not

challenge any of the dramatically conflicting evidence, but

merely went through a low-intensity process in which the

provision of cups of coffee, Jammie Dodger biscuits, and

rest breaks every hour appeared to be the dominating

consideration.

The detectives were so unconnected that they did not notice

that the recording equipment had failed for eight hours

during what must be regarded as four of the most important

sessions. If that were not bad enough, they permitted one

witness to refresh his memory from the statement of

another and then to make substantial alterations to official

notes and statements. It is little wonder that Madeleine’s

case is unresolved.

In a recent Crown Court case, a woman claimed that

she had been raped 20 years earlier by her father and

that afterwards he used to wash himself in the upstairs

bathroom sink. The defence proved that at the time

alleged offence, the bathroom had not been built. The



NOTES alarming thing was that the police had made no attempt

to corroborate the woman’s evidence.

Why Internal Investigations Are Important

UK statistics suggest that crime rates are at an all-time low,

but this conclusion is more than suspect.

Dodgy Dossiers and KPIs

In June 2014, the Office for National Statistics reported

that the UK had the lowest crime rates in 33 years

amounting to 7.3 million offences. Norman Baker, the

then Crime Prevention Minister, said that: “This is

good news…. I am encouraged by the continued drop in

crime survey figures; a survey regarded internationally

as the gold standard.”

The encouraging good news was short lived because in

November 2014 HM Inspector of Constabulary

reported disgraceful skulduggery over the way crimes

were recorded: or more correctly not recorded. Over

800,000 offences a year vanished into the ether; mainly

to hide the fact that key performance targets had not

been met.

But this was still only a small part of the illusion. In

England and Wales, 4 million crimes went unrecorded,

including 3.6 million bank and credit card frauds because

“the victims and locations of the crimes were difficult to

pin down.” Also, victims are urged not to disturb their local

police but to report to the national “Action Fraud” hotline.

All well and good except that 40 percent of reports made to

that line were never referred to the police and therefore

omitted from crime statistics.



NOTES No Support

Most UK police forces are disinterested in fraud and

dismissive of its victims. Time after time cases are

rejected for investigation because it is supposedly a

“civil matter” or for some other unconvincing excuse.

Prosecutorial agencies are loath to work on fraud

cases—unless they can whack the victim company with

a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) or some

other easily extracted financial penalty.

In August 2014, Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO)

was highly critical of botched initial investigations into

bribery allegations by “expensive external lawyers”

who had an “inherent conflict”. This followed the

collapse of a massive SFO prosecution when American

lawyers retained by the victim organisation as

investigators refused to give evidence; despite having

earlier agreed to do so.

The result of police disinterest and the SFO’s execration of

internal investigations is that victim companies are left in

limbo, suffering losses, recovering nothing, although hit

with legal actions and reputational damage. On the other

hand, skulduggers walk away unscathed. This is the

ultimate outcome of low-intensity interviewing.

The solution is for companies to designate their own

internal resources and to specify process to detect and

respond to fraud.

First Responders

The problem is that companies are woefully unprepared to

deal with fraud, resulting in far too many cases being

irreparably compromised within 24 hours of discovery. The

predominant reasons for failures were that the first

responders did not maximise the advantage of surprise, nor



NOTES recognise the importance of the initial exchanges in getting

to the deep truth.

Deep truth means establishing the factual base of a current

incident and all associated cases beyond reasonable doubt

and developing intelligence on other matters to:

Clear innocent people and organisations wrongly

accused at the earliest possible stage.

Obtain confessions or incontrovertible evidence of

guilt, thereby increasing remedial options.

The deep truth is undisputed and consistent with all other

evidence. It clears innocent people with certainty but leaves

skulduggers no room for maneuver.

There is a significant difference (illustrated in Figure 1

below) between internal investigations and those conducted

by official law-enforcement agencies:

Figure 1: Differences between official and internal fraud

investigations



NOTES Possibly the three most significant differences between

official and internal investigations are:

The majority of internal interviews with subjects,

suspects, witnesses, informants, and whistleblowers are

not intended to result in criminal proceedings and are

therefore not subject to cautions under the Police and

Criminal Evidence Act or equivalent laws in other

countries.

Subjects (and especially members of the extended

enterprise, such as suppliers, customers, and agents, as

well as most employees) can and do refuse to answer

questions. This is not the case with official

investigations where Section 2 orders under the

Criminal Justice Act require that every question is

answered.

Victim companies need to prove the extent of the

losses—on the balance of probabilities—in the hope

that they can be recovered, whereas law-enforcement

agencies require proof beyond reasonable doubt of

specific offences.

Refusal to answer questions is one of the most common

reasons why internal investigations fail. Thus companies

are strongly advised to incorporate an obligation to

report suspected incidents and to cooperate in

investigations in all contracts with employees and other

members of the extended enterprise. This simple policy

shift dramatically improves the chances of completing

internal investigations successfully. A subject’s refusal to

cooperate should lead to his or her dismissal and removal

from positions with the opportunity for future frauds. This,

in itself, is a significant outcome.

A second important recommendation is that first

responders should aim beyond the low-intensity

interviewing trend and focus on establishing the deep



NOTES truth with subjects and witnesses. Excellent training

courses on interviewing and interrogation are available.

Among the best are those run by Don Rabon for the ACFE

and programmes—much maligned by the UK chattering

classes—through John E. Reid of Chicago.

Also, Cobasco Group Limited has published a free, 80-page

interviewing and interrogation guide that can be

downloaded by ACFE members from

http://online.flipbuilder.com/Cobasco/cpkq.

Some Additional Points

Introduction

There are a few topics in (or not in) training

programmes and interviewing schemes on which

further comment might be helpful.

Detecting Deception

There are hundreds of clues that a subject is not telling

the truth. These are summarized on Figure 2 and

explained in the guide referred to earlier.

http://online.flipbuilder.com/Cobasco/cpkq/



NOTES

Figure 2: Some clues to deception

In practice there are so many clues that they cannot be

consciously handled during the heat of the moment.

Thus interviewers should apply a simple rule, which

is “trust your instincts”.

The far more important question is whether and how

the interviewer should react when a sign of deception

appears. Should he let the subject dig a deeper hole

from which he cannot escape or draw his attention to it

and ask for an explanation? The options are discussed

in Cobasco’s guide.

The Importance Framing

Framing, which is an important theory in social

science, refers to the way a person interprets, labels,

and puts a topic in context, sets its boundaries and



NOTES priorities. Framing can be an unconscious mental

shortcut or a conscious construct to deceive.

Figure 3: Framing Is Important

There are few aspects of life and virtually none in

politics where misleading or deliberately false framing

is not a feature.

When the Frame Does Not Fit

Global warming was the frame used to justify

massive increases in environmental taxes essential

to save the planet. When evidence emerged that the

planet was not warming, the frame had to be

abandoned and replaced by climate change.



NOTES Currently any unusual weather pattern—hot, cold,

wet, dry, windy, or calm—is shoe-horned into the

climate-change narrative.

People typically accept frames imposed by others

without thinking about what is implied or the

consequences. The first rule of interviewing is to

validate the frame.

The word interrogation is typically framed negatively,

implying the use of hard tactics such as aggression and

torture to extract “confessions” which, in turn, are

framed entirely differently in legal and religious

contexts. This paper contends that interrogation is a

valid, ethical, and powerful tool to find the deep

truth and confessions are not only cathartic but

enable skulduggers to reform and get off to a fresh

start. Equally as important, they clear innocent

people of suspicion. The worst outcome of any

investigation or interview is uncertainty. Unresolved

suspicion is debilitating for the organisation and for

everyone associated with it.

In most interviews and interrogations, the frames of the

interviewer and a subject guilty of the act suspected or

of some other misbehaviour are misaligned and thus

dissonant. A guilty subject usually perceives that the

interviewer is out to ensnare him and interviewer intuits

that the subject is intent on deception. Thus reaching a

meaningful outcome within these dissonant frames is

difficult, routinely attempted but often doomed to

failure. It should also be noted that a subject might tell

lies for reasons completely outside the interviewer’s

frame of reference.



NOTES The essence of successful interviewing is that the

subject must be shifted into a shared (or “we”) frame.

There follows a simple example, but it illustrates the

concept.

The Importance of Finding a “We” Frame

Sir Winston Churchill was at a banquet when he

saw a foreign VIP pocket a very expensive salt

cellar and stand up about to leave. Sir Winston

knew if the theft came to light there could be a

diplomatic crisis and, besides that, it was not in his

nature to stand aside and let crooks escape.

He put another salt cellar in his own pocket, walked

towards the VIP, sidled up to him and said, very

confidentially: “I think we have been spotted. We

had better put them back.” The VIP complied

immediately, thanked Sir Winston, and a diplomatic

scandal was averted.

In interviews and interrogations there are at least three

frames that have to be considered:

The commission frame (in which and at which time

the misbehaviour occurred) is almost always

exposed to dissonance, vigorously anchored and

defended by the subject, and assailed by the

interviewer by probing the factual base. The subject

expects to be questioned in this frame and is likely

to have prepared and rehearsed his responses. In our

experience, 90 percent of interviews and

interrogations are fixated on the commission frame

and factual base. Although it is a valid interrogative

approach, probing cognitive and emotional channels

can be even more effective because it is not

anticipated by the subject.

The current frame is the “here and now” and it is

far less strongly anchored by either the interviewer



NOTES or the subject. The resolution frame is even more

fluid and potentially more emotional and can be

transformed into a “we” frame. What’s more the

subject is less likely to have prepared himself for

questioning in this frame because it is a strange

omission that most fraudsters never consider their

end game.

There is one further frame that is almost always

ignored and is referred to as the pre-commission

frame. Probing this frame is often a productive way

of modifying even the most obdurate subject’s

position.

The principle is to identify the subject’s frames and

to move among them to increase anxiety or identify

common ground.

Transactional Analysis

Eric Berne’s theory of Transactional Analysis, which is

rarely mentioned in interviewing and interrogation

contexts, posits that in our communications (or

transactions) with other people we adopt (usually

unconsciously) one of three ego states. These are

usually referred to as Parent, Adult, or Child. Parents

are further subdivided into Critical or Nurturing and

children into Rebellious or Adaptive. Figure 4

summarises the relationships. The label controlling

parent has been substituted in place of critical parent

because it more accurately represents the relationship in

the business world. If you think about these

relationships in a family context, their characteristics

become obvious as do the mechanics necessary to move

between them.



NOTES

Figure 4: Transactional Relationships

A transaction is regarded as equal—and more likely to

be harmonious—when the parties to it are happy to

accept their roles. The following are usually equal

transactions, with 10 being the most harmonious and 1

the least:

Participant 1

Role

Participant 2 Role

Parent

Adult

Child

Controlling Nurturing Rebellious Adaptive

Parent: Controlling 4 5 5 6 7

Parent: Nurturing 5 5 10 7 10

Adult 10

Table 1: Harmonious and other relationships

An interviewer might deliberately cross a transaction to

raise the temperature and provoke a subject into an

overreaction. In some cases the stronger the

overreaction the better because once the dust settles (as

it usually will) the subject will often rebound to a more

Adult

Nurturing Parent

Adaptive Child

Controlling Parent

Adult

Rebellious Child



NOTES reasonable position than that from which he started.

Why not try it on your boss? Once an interviewer is in

control of the transactional relationship, the battle is

almost won.

The safe bet in most interviews is to start off as an adult

and consciously change roles depending on the

immediate objectives and interview phase. For

example, to increase anxiety and pin the subject down

to details, the interviewer should adopt the role of a

controlling parent and test and probe until the subject

spirals to a pivotal point when he loses confidence in

his ability to succeed. Amazingly, at this point most

subjects visibly shrink.

The interviewer should then switch at this point to the

role of a nurturing parent, usually resulting in the

subject reacting as an adaptive child, leading to

admissions and confessions. The recommended flow

and transactional shifts are illustrated in Figure 5.



NOTES

Figure 5: The deep truth arrives when the interviewer is in the role

of a nurturing parent

Further detail on this figure is set out in the guide

referred to earlier.

Taking Notes

If the first reason for failure is misaligned frames and

dissonance, the second is the negative effect of note

taking. Bad interviewers are preoccupied with taking

contemporaneous notes and some lawyers are even

worse because they insist on having a junior oink write

down every word right under the subject’s nose. The

principle is to keep note taking to the minimum, use

trigger notes or mind maps, but never write down

anything while the subject is speaking. And if an

interviewer wants to try a novel approach, she might



NOTES ask the subject to write the notes. Can you see any

advantages in doing this?

Key Points and Production of Evidence

In most fraud cases there is documentation or other

evidence that can be regarded as key, either suggesting

the subject’s guilt or innocence. How these are handled

and produced is critical. For example, are they best held

in reserve until the subject has made untruthful denials

about them or displayed openly to increase his anxiety?

Documentation should be assembled in the order in

which it will be produced in the interview. In complex

cases it should be indexed or colour coded with sticky

notes. The visual impact of exhibits should be

maximized and their production must be slick and

professional. If the interviewer fumbles around trying to

find documents, spills tea or Jammie Dodger biscuits

over them, he is immediately perceived in a child role.

Finally, on this point, key documentation should be

presented to the subject in conjunction with relevant

questions. The visual impact is important and where

possible, copies of incriminating exhibits should be

kept in the subject’s personal space. Every time he

constructs a defensive barrier with his arms, legs, or

body, he could be handed a document that requires him

to shift.

Rehearsal and Reports

Every important interview should be rehearsed with the

proposed interviewer initially playing the role of the

subject and in a distinct second phase his own.

Experience shows that this improves success rates of

confessions and admissions by around 20 percent.



NOTES Finally, many investigators find report writing worse

than a pain. In fact, the report is one of the most

important tools in any investigation and should start—

together with a detailed chronology—from the earliest

stages with cross references to and explanations of

documentary and other evidence. When report writing

is an iterative process, it highlights evidential

inconsistencies that might otherwise go unnoticed. So

the bottom line proposed here is that report writing

should be reframed as the investigator’s best friend.

Believe it!

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