Forensic Accounting: Finding the Smoking E-mail

Think you have a lot of e-mails? Those who work within the e-discovery process — the handling of electronic information and documents for litigation purposes — most likely have more.

“Many of the smoking guns in a lot of these cases reside in e-mail,” said Catherine Parente, CPA, ABV, CVA and partner-in-charge of the consulting services department at CPA and business advisory firm Carlin, Charron & Rosen LLP. She added that one of the cases she’s currently working on includes four boxes of records, two of which contain printed out e-mails.