February 15, 2011 | Richard Veilleux

Accounting Students Track Down the ‘Bad Guys’

Students get a taste of what it would be like to work for the IRS by solving simulated crimes.

<p>Firearms instructor Bill Skene instructs freshman Max Capeschi during a gunning simulation during a Forensic Accountant workshop. Photo by Ariel Dowski.</p>
Firearms instructor Bill Skene instructs freshman Max Capeschi during a simulation exercise staged by IRS agents. Photos by Ariel Dowski

Career fairs are often droll events, with well-dressed students visiting well-dressed company representatives sitting behind curtained tables, passing out glossy corporate marketing brochures.

That wasn’t the case last Friday, when the Internal Revenue Service visited campus to give UConn students a taste of what an agent of the service’s Criminal Investigation Division does for a living.

“It was a lot of fun, totally different,” says Ashley Lagaca, a junior accounting major from Griswold. “We did a lot of surveillance, following the agent around all over campus.”

Surveillance was only one aspect of the day’s event, which brought about 20 IRS agents – including four UConn alumni – to Storrs to engage in five simulated crimes. The 30 students broke out into five teams, each with an agent acting as coach and each with a crime to solve. Other agents served as role players, including the “bad guys,” their foils, whistle blowers, and magistrates.

“It gives the students a feel for the kind of career they would have if they worked at the IRS,” says Cliff Nelson, an accounting professor who helped arrange the visit, along with Beta Alpha Psi, an accounting fraternity and the event sponsor. “What I find most interesting is that the students start the day very quiet, reluctant to talk, but they’re going rapid fire by the end.”

Nelson’s account was, indeed, correct. There were few comments or raised hands during a 30-minute introductory talk by John Collins, assistant special agent in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit’s Boston field office. But as the teams began returning to the cafeteria in the School of Business Friday afternoon, the students were bubbling with excitement over their investigative work.

Matt Bertelli of Clinton, a senior accounting major, was beaming as he returned to the room, his team having successfully captured “Chris Shots,” the owner of “Cheaters Bar & Grill.” It seems that Shots was trying to sell his bar, but had been keeping two sets of books. An informant told Bertelli’s team he thought something was amiss, so the group investigated the bar, interrogated the principals, then sent two members of their group to see Shots – played by IRS special agent Sean Darling – acting as interested buyers. After their discussion, they applied for a search warrant from a judge, a role played by Maria Papageorgiou, a supervisory special agent in the IRS’s Hartford office and a 2001 UConn graduate.

Enforcing the search warrant, the team found both sets of books – and cash – and Shots was arrested.

<p>UConn accounting students come together for a Forensic Accountant workshop in the cafe of The School of Business building. Photo by Ariel Dowski.</p>
UConn accounting students come together in the School of Business cafeteria at the end of a day-long forensic accountant workshop.

“It was great,” says Bertelli, who has been accepted to UConn’s business school for a master’s degree in accounting. “It’s exactly what I want to do. I learned about the job last year, and I’ve done some basic research about it. What I saw today cements my desire to join them.”

Darling, the IRS special agent who played Shots, said the students did an excellent job. “They kept pounding on me, pushing me to explain why the bar was worth what I was asking when the books I was showing them didn’t indicate it was a huge money maker. Finally I had to pull out the real books, and they had what they needed.”

Lagaca, the junior from Griswold, joined a team that tracked down a man who was filing false tax returns. She, too, said she was interested in joining the IRS, but first wanted to be a public accountant for a few years.

Other teams arrested a drug dealer, Roger Pothead, for money laundering; a racetrack regular, Tri Fecta, who was filing false claims; and Guy Gambler, an embezzler.

This was the third year the IRS crew has brought The Adrian Project to UConn, named after Adrian College in Detroit where they first held a field day about a decade ago. The Boston office has organized it for about seven years, including the three at UConn and four at Bentley College, both of which they consider to have above average accounting programs, says Jessica Crocker, a special agent and public information officer in the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit’s Boston field office.

The only potential downside for the students? During the introduction, they took an oath to become special student agents, as part of which Collins, the Boston-based special agent, injected a promise “to always pay my taxes.”