[NorCal]

I just received my CPA license and am considering becoming a Certified Fraud Examiner as the next step. If anybody has taken the exam or is preparing for it, could you please share some information in terms of difficulty and time required to study for it? I also have a question about the experience required. On their website, ACFE states that “at the time you are certified, you must have at least two years of professional experience in a field either directly or indirectly related to the detection or deterrence of fraud.” This seems like a pretty loose definition; has anybody had problems with ACFE accepting their experience?

Thank you for any input and good luck to everybody studying for the CPA.

[KERI0323]

I took the CFE at the end of 2009 as part of a correspondence course for my masters for my last 3 hours of Accounting coursework. I found it to be very easy if you are pretty good with memorization (easy as far as certification exams go). I bought the review course which is about 1500 multiple choice questions set up exactly like the exam which you answer until they are all correct, similar to the Becker Passmaster software. The course comes with an electronic version of the fraud handbook but I found that my college coursework and the multiple choice explanations were sufficient. Once you feel you are ready, you submit your request to take the exam and you take it at home in your pj's and email the results; you never get a score if you pass unless they've changed that. It took me about 2 weeks to go through all of the multiple choice and I finished all parts of the exam in less than 4 hours total. As far as experience goes, at the time I had been working as a staff accountant/manager for 5 years, general financial statement preparation. If you have met the experience for the CPA you should be good to go. If you have any other questions feel free to message me here or email me at rien0323@hotmail.com. Also, this certification allows you to skip the 4th part of the CIA exam if you were considering that one as well.

BEC 10/11/2010 77
AUD 11/30/2010 81
REG 02/25/2011 78
FAR 11/28/2011 74,68, 83 and DONE!!! NTS LA #460

[Sdb2fsu]

I agree. I've been a CFE for about three years now and found that the CPA exam is way harder (as well it should be). I agree with Keri on the process. Basically you are studying the exam as you complete the exam prep material. In my opinion I feel that this distinction could be a good one to have in the future. However, there really wasn't that much emphasis on accounting (at least not as detailed as the CPA exam). I've heard that the FBI and CIA are looking into having this distinction something they look for. As far as experience, I was on governmental accounting for three years prior to taking the exam. It is indirect and direct so I believe they interpret that pretty loosely.

BEC - 60, 71, 79
AUD - 73, 66, 87!!!!! Yes! I am done!
REG - 74, 76
FAR - 75

Yaeger Review for all except my last AUD score (Roger)!

[Anonymous]

If you have your CPA, then one part of the CIA exam is waived.. (you don't have to have your CFE to have a part in the CIA waived)

The CIA has the same weird requirement, you have to have 2 years experience or 1 year +MBA. I have my MBA. I was curious what would count as 1 year experience. I wonder if they are strict on that. Maybe I'll do the CFE instead.

[Author]

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