Accounting students will be IRS special agents in training as part of a simulated criminal investigation on May 31 at the University of Georgia

Athens, Ga. — About 25 students taking a Maymester course in forensic accounting at the University of Georgia will experience what it’s like to be criminal investigators with the Internal Revenue Service during a four-hour fraud investigation simulation set for Tuesday, May 31, on the UGA campus.

The role-playing simulation will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in 12 rooms on the fifth floor of the journalism building.

Accounting professor Tina Carpenter, who has taught Forensic Accounting and Fraud Examination (ACCT 7651) since 2005, said this is the first time her curriculum has included the Adrian Project, an outreach program that the criminal investigations branch of the IRS developed about 10 years ago at Adrian College in Michigan.

“There will be 14 special agents staged throughout the various classrooms, and they will be actors in the fraud investigations we will be simulating,” said Carpenter, the Ernst & Young Teaching Fellow in the Tull School of Accounting. “The students have met with the IRS agent in charge of the event, so they know what to expect. The class is already structured around student teams, and each team has six or seven students. For the Adrian Project, each team will have a special agent acting as their coach to lead them in their live investigations. They are excited about this opportunity, and I am so thankful that Bryant Brooks contacted me about bringing this to UGA.”

Brooks, a special agent in the IRS Criminal Investigation field office in Atlanta, has two business degrees from UGA’s Terry College of Business. He said the simulation is a way for the IRS to introduce its career opportunities to accounting students studying auditing and taxation. It also exposes them to several techniques used in fraud and criminal investigations that are not typically a part of college coursework, he said.

UGA’s J.M. Tull School of Accounting was one of the first in the nation to be established as a separate professional school within a college of business. The school’s undergraduate and master’s programs are ranked among the top 10 byPublic Accounting Report, and it is rated among the top 20 undergraduate accounting programs by U.S. News & World Report.