Fall 2012 Alumni Magazine - Lake Erie College

Alumni Spotlight
James Gargas ’04 lands
on the front line of today’s
white-collar warzone
by Susan Licate ’05, MBA ’08
As a young high school PSEO student
taking community college courses, James
Gargas ’04 knew only that he wanted to
go to college. He didn’t have a charted
course, but he knew once he took
Principles of Accounting that the world
of assets and liabilities came to him quite
easily. Gargas enrolled at Lake Erie as a
transfer commuter student and majored
in accounting.
Once he completed his bachelor’s
degree, he entered graduate school
at Miami University, where he
interned with one of the Big Four
accounting firms, landing in the U.S.
corporate and tax services group
with a three-month assignment
in London. “That was in the
spring of 2005; even though I
was being challenged in the
dynamic environment that is public
accounting, which I enjoyed, I
realized tax just wasn’t for me,”
he said.
Gargas, who became a Certified
Public Accountant at the end of graduate
school, also assisted multi-national
U.S.-based companies with investments in
Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This
gave him the depth of knowledge he was
hungry for and the experience to work
as an independent contractor to teach
“layers” of accounting to non-accounting
professionals, such as attorneys. During
this time, he discovered the ever-growing
issues surrounding white-collar crime.
With the rapid growth in technology,
cyber-crime has become the breeding
ground for corporate fraud, which has
not only opened the front door, but also
rolled out the welcome mat for criminal
intent. As billion-dollar companies work
to streamline processes and modernize
methods, sometimes they also, unfortunately,
become prime targets for fraud
due to gaps in their internal controls.
With the rapid growth in
technology, cyber-crime has
become the breeding ground
for corporate fraud, which
has not only opened the
front door, but rolled out the
welcome mat for
criminal intent.
Gargas found the field of forensic
accounting fascinating and laden with
opportunities. According to the Occupational
Outlook Handbook, the accounting
field is expected to grow by 16 percent
by 2016, due in part to the demand for
forensic accountants. He soon dove in
and landed in Washington D.C. hired by
another Big Four firm, PwC, and has since
been poised for career growth, personal
advancement and global adventure.
At PwC, Gargas was assigned to advise
clients who had been victimized by
bribery and corruption. He has worked
on cases in more than forty countries.
World travel, he discovered, would be
his commute to the office. Gargas has
since developed deep experience as
a specialist in anti-bribery and anticorruption
projects.
“As U.S.-based companies increasingly
rely on the world as their
oyster and emerging markets as
drivers of growth, their exposure to
bribery risk and foreign government
officials continues to be a concern.
We help companies avoid violations
of U.S. law and with that, promote
compliance; we help to raise their
moral standing. We are typically
hired to investigate specific
allegations of corruption or to
work on behalf of the company to
proactively manage corruption risk
in their existing operations or acquisition
targets,” Gargas said.
Assignments can range from two days to
two months, and Gargas frequently travels
from country to country for weeks at a
time. In the first half of 2012, he worked
in Brazil, Argentina, China, Japan, Kenya,
Continued on page 35
22 LAKE ERIE | FALL ‘12