Biography of Michael J Comer

Mike Comer is the Managing Director of  Cobasco Group Limited  ("Cobasco"), an elite community of fraud and compliance practitioners, which works in mentoring relationships with clients to prevent, detect, investigate and recuperate from corporate fraud.

      

Elite Mentoring
         
From 1963 to 1971 he served as a Commissioned Officer in HM Customs & Excise Investigation Branch for which he successfully handled hundreds of investigations into commercial, revenue, narcotics smuggling, Organised Crime and complex financial frauds. He successfully investigated some of the first cases of computer crime in Europe. He has multiple commendations from judges at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, and from other civil and criminal courts for his skills as an Investigator.      

Commendations
         
Headhunted by Esso Petroleum Company Limited in 1971, he was appointed as Corporate Security Co-ordinator and later as Security Adviser for Esso Europe Inc. In these positions he directed the European-wide protection programme for critical assets including investments in the North Sea, refineries, extensive computer and communications networks, a large marine fleet, thousands of retail outlets and for more than 60,000 people.      

ESSO
         
In 1979, he resigned from Esso to found Network Security Management Limited which became the most successful fraud consultancy in Europe, building annual profits to over £4 million and with a staff of over one hundred. In 1987, the company became a subsidiary of Hambros Bank Limited.      

Network 
         
In 1996, Mike Comer resigned from Hambros and in 1998 launched Maxima Group Plc which rapidly established itself as a leading counter- fraud practitioner. However, in both Network and Maxima, he became disillusioned over the inability of these, and other larger consultancies, to consistently maintain quality and to deliver value to clients.      

Maxima Group
         
In 2002 he resigned from Maxima to establish Cobasco as an elite, specialist consultancy, involving a handpicked community of top class practitioners in whom he has total confidence.      

Maintaining standards
         
From 1979 onwards, Mike Comer has worked with hundreds of clients on a wide range of preventive assignments and has investigated scores of high profile frauds in Europe, Asia, Africa and in South and North America, successfully and without publicity. He instigated the concepts of automated fraud detection and diagnostic profiling which have uncovered losses in excess of $300,000,000.       Clients and record of innovation
         
He worked with Edward de Bono and James Martin on a strategic project to fundamentally reappraise the way businesses manage operational risks. He trained the Anti-Corruption Bureau and Customs Departments for two Asian countries and worked directly with Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica, in restructuring the country’s Customs & Excise department. Fifteen years later, his recommendations are still working successfully.       Government assignments
         
Mike Comer lectures in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and the United States to professional audiences including senior managers, accountants, internal auditors, to the American Society for Industrial Security, Institute of Bankers, Bank Administration Institute, London and City University Business Schools, Harvard Advanced Management Groups, Stanford University and to the legal profession and government departments. His two day seminar on "Corporate Fraud" has run – at least twice a year - for over 30 years and has been appraised by over 98% of the thousands of participants as "excellent" or "very good".      

Training record
         
He served as Visiting Professor at Cranfield Institute of Technology and is currently an Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Scarman Centre, University of Leicester. He is past President of the European Chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and ex-Chairman of the American Society of Industrial Security’s committee on fraud. He is a member of MENSA.       Universities
         
Mike Comer has written six books on fraud which have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, Thai and Chinese. "Corporate Fraud III" was released by Gower Publications Ltd in August 1997 and has become a best seller. In February 2003, Gower published "Investigating Corporate Fraud" which was reviewed by Professional Security magazine as a "masterpiece" and "a survival guide for businesses".       Books



 

Biography of Tim Stephens
Tim Stephens is a director of Cobasco Group Limited ("Cobasco") and its associated companies, in charge of research and intelligence.      

Research and Intelligence
         
He worked for ten years in the financial advisory field, for some of the largest firms on the Stock Exchange. Subsequently, for almost twenty years, he advised large industrial, commercial and financial organisations on the potential to increase profitability by controlling their overhead costs.       Financial advisory
         
In 1998, he joined Maxima Group Plc., and played an important part in its launch and subsequent successes. Tim was responsible for the production of the Inside Fraud Bulletin to which he contributed a number of groundbreaking articles, including reviews of the Partners Against Crime initiative, Data Protection Legislation and the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act.

In 2003, he left Maxima with Mike Comer to launch Cobasco.

       Inside Fraud
         
Tim is co-author of "Deception at Work", to be published by Ashgate in 2003 and he contributed to the Gower book: "Investigating Corporate Fraud" which was acclaimed as a "masterpiece", on its release in 2002, and a "survival guide for business".       Books