Automated Audits Can Slash M&A Fraud Risks
The M&A Fraud That Hides in Plain Sight
You’ve just closed an acquisition. Due diligence is done, the deal team has moved on and somewhere in the newly consolidated accounts, a fraud is quietly unravelling.
Discover one of the most damaging and preventable risks in M&A: “buyer beware” fraud, where sellers manipulate financial accounts to inflate valuations before a deal closes.
Through a real case study, Olivier Cornet walks through how a target company’s manager artificially boosted revenue with fictitious invoices, deferred expenses and strategic reclassifications driving up the EBITDA-based purchase price. The manipulation went undetected for months, largely because the M&A team and the finance department never properly handed over between them.
The article outlines the structural flaw at the heart of many acquisitions, the communication gap between deal teams and finance, and explains how automated post-acquisition audits can close it. From detecting historical accounting anomalies to cross-checking turnover against actual cash flows, the right technology can make every manipulation visible, before it’s too late to act.
Because in M&A, what you don’t audit, you pay for.
Read the full article on The Fintech Times
About this article:
‘Automated Audits Can Slash M&A Fraud Risks‘, initially published on The Fintech Times on April 7th, 2026
