Accounting students shown exciting career path

recruiting future agents, who will learn how to shoot, drive in a high-speed chase, take down a suspect and perform a financial audit.
On Friday, April 11, Foy and his team were at Queens College (QC), participating in the “Adrian Project” between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigations Division and universities throughout the U.S., to introduce accounting students to this little-known law-enforcement career opportunity.
Twenty-two accounting students from QC and Pace University in Manhattan fanned out in teams around the campus and surrounding areas, acting out activities like a “buy and bust” drug deal with realistic-looking guns and drugs. “It’s really baby spinach, flour, oregano and ‘Tic-Tacs,’ ” Foy confided, joking, “You could make a nice lunch.”
The IRS Special Agents (as opposed to the “Revenue Agents” everyone dreads) track down financial shenanigans, from embezzlement and underreporting revenue on the sale of cash businesses, to identity theft and drug sales.
While the latter might seem to belong to another agency, Foy reminds us that following the money has been a crime-fighting tool for a long time.
“One of the biggest gangsters in history, Al Capone, finally got sent to prison for tax evasion,” he said.
The students got to interrogate the “dealer’s girlfriend and bookkeeper,” in actuality, Diane Greenidge, the New York Area IRS Administrative Officer. “All the instructional participants have to be total strangers to the students,” she explained.
Other sessions included instruction on how to enter a room in a combat or hostage situation and how to search and handcuff a suspect.
Somewhat less exciting segments included searching for evidence - in the trash, of course - or checking a suspicious name against the headstones in a nearby cemetery.
“Over 60 percent of federal prosecutions are for ‘white collar’ crimes,” Foy explained, adding “Fraud and money-laundering are multi-billion dollar activities.”
The program began at Adrian College in Michigan in 2002 and has spread to about half of the United States. Since its inception, over 1,000 have participated in the “IRS Special Agent-for-a-Day” program.
“I heard about it when I was at an accounting conference in Chicago,” said John Walker, dean of the QC accounting department. “We tried it for the first time last year, and it was a resounding success.”
The “we” isn’t an affectation - Walker’s wife, Suzanne O’Callaghan, is a professor of accounting at Pace. She was at the conference, and got them involved, too.
“They called me within five minutes of each other and they hadn’t even discussed it,” Foy revealed.
Coming to QC is something of a homecoming for Foy - he’s an alumnus. “I graduated in 1989, got certified and decided to spend some time in Spain, to learn the language,” he recounted.
Foy sees Queens and QC as the ideal place for the program. “We need the diversity - a lot of immigrants go into cash businesses, and concealing income is a widespread practice in many countries.”
When he first interviewed with the IRS, and found out about the Division, he was intrigued. “I have to admit the notion of carrying a badge and gun was exciting,” he confessed, “It is for a lot of these kids, too - otherwise, you know … it’s accounting.”
“The truth is that roughly one-third of accounting students leave the field,” Foy offers, recounting, “One of my best memories is when a trainee thanked me because ‘I found what I want to do for the rest of my life.’”