By GREGORY ZELLER //
Following a special Internal Revenue Service operation, several arrests were made this week at SUNY Old Westbury.
Fortunately – at least, for the apprehended suspects – nobody will do any serious time.
That’s not to say the operation wasn’t serious: Suspected criminals were clandestinely followed, key evidence was collected, arrest warrants were issued and executed and cuffs were slapped on wrists.
But it was all just an exercise – an “interactive crime simulation,” according to SUNY Old Westbury, designed to enlighten accounting students about little-known career opportunities within the IRS Criminal Investigation Division.
David Glodstein: Criminal intent.
The simulation was conducted through the Adrian Project, an IRS outreach program that gives students at nationwide colleges a firsthand look at the work and methods of special revenue agents who “track illicit money from the crime to the criminal,” SUNY Old Westbury said in a statement.
The apprehended were actual IRS-CID agents, playing the heavies in an elaborate tax-fraud scheme. Investigating and busting the bad guys were 34 graduate students in SUNY Old Westbury’s forensic accounting, taxation and accounting programs, each of whom was “sworn in” as an honorary special agent for the day-long detective story.
After reviewing bank statements and tax returns and obtaining arrest warrants from “federal judges,” the students were supplied with IRS-CID vests, radios and prop handguns. They tailed suspects around the Old Westbury Campus Center and, when they knew they’d gathered enough evidence, moved in for the bust.
Besides being great fun, the exercise introduced the graduate students to potential careers they might not have otherwise considered – or even known about – with the IRS, the only federal law enforcement agency that requires agents to have at least 15 college credits in accounting.
While classroom lessons and less-dramatic group projects are always “incredibly valuable,” the Adrian Project “brings that work to life,” according to SUNY Old Westbury Accounting Associate Professor David Glodstein, director of the college’s Master of Science in Forensic Accounting program – the only forensic accounting graduate-degree program offered on Long Island.
“When we take learning outside of the classroom, it shows the material in a whole new dimension to students,” Glodstein added. “This activity lets them directly apply the knowledge and skills they are learning in class to scenarios they may one day experience in the field.”
