The Numbers May be Right.

𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐢𝐬.

I've spent much of my career looking at data and asking a fairly simple question:

𝘋𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦?

That's also an incredibly useful question during a merger or acquisition.

Traditional due diligence can tell you a great deal about a company. But sometimes the interesting things aren't sitting neatly in a financial statement or contract. They're buried in the underlying data.

A strange concentration of transactions.

Payments that don't follow the normal pattern.

Duplicate or related vendors.

Unusual timing.

Adjustments that consistently move in one direction.

Operational activity that doesn't quite support the financial story.

None of those things, by themselves, prove fraud.

But they can tell you where to look next.

That's where I think forensic data analysis can add another dimension to M&A due diligence: not starting with an accusation, but starting with curiosity.

𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒅𝒐𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂 𝒔𝒂𝒚 - 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒅𝒐𝒆𝒔 𝒊𝒕 𝒂𝒈𝒓𝒆𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒘𝒆'𝒓𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐𝒍𝒅?

That's often where the interesting work begins.

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