Southern California

Take your skills to the next level with a diverse community of Fincrime professionals

Southern California

Take your skills to the next level with a diverse community of Fincrime professionals

Our chapter promotes ACFCS as a platform for collaboration between public and private financial crime industry specialists to facilitate better compliance, investigations, and enforcement. By hosting educational programs and a wide range of events of local interest, featuring speakers from private-sector and financial regulatory enforcement agencies, our chapter offers unique career development and professional networking opportunities to our members in the Southern California area.

OUR MISSION

The mission of the ACFCS Southern California Chapter is to increase access to practical tools, knowledge, and emerging trends to help industry professionals detect and prevent financial crime.
Katya Gozias Headshot

Katya Gozias

Chair

Asha Muldro Headshot

Asha Muldro

Programming Director

Lieut. Stephan Margolis (Ret.) Headshot

Lieut. Stephan Margolis (Ret.)

Event Manager

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Lieutenant Stephan Margolis (Event Manager) has worked for over 40 years on a broad spectrum of law enforcement issues. Over the last decade his assignment was the Officer-in-Charge of Transnational Organized Crime, Major Crimes Division of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). In this role he partnered with federal and international agencies to investigate and prosecute global criminal enterprises.

Stephan has also managed the Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Section, Gang Intervention Team (gang and narcotics), Divisional Detectives, Patrol, and Mobile Field Forces. As an officer, detective, and sergeant, he has worked patrol, detectives, homicide, crime analysis, and several other specialized units. Over his career, Stephan co-developed five pilot programs that were recognized as “best practices” and instituted in LAPD.

Since 1985, Stephan has worked in National Security as a federal contractor developing and teaching responses to international terrorism. He has worked over a decade as a principal Subject Matter Expert and trainer for DOE’s Senior Energy Officials responding to radiological/nuclear crises. Lieutenant Margolis developed (for the National Nuclear Security Administration) the Crisis Decision Making (CDM) model to manage critical incidents.

As a California state POST certified Master Instructor, Lieutenant Margolis co-developed and delivered a wide spectrum of training for local, state, and federal law enforcement. He has held a previous appointment as adjunct faculty for California State University, Dominguez Hills, where he taught courses on Systems Theory, Scientific Methodology, and Contemporary Political Issues in the United States.

Sal Randazzo Headshot

Sal Randazzo

Event Manager

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Sal Randazzo (Event Manager) was appointed as the Deputy Inspector General, Investigations in May 2019 for the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD), Office of the Inspector General. He leads a team responsible for investigating allegations of improper or illegal activities by LAUSD employees, contractors or other entities doing business with the LAUSD. His team’s workload consists of proactive projects and investigations designed to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.

Before taking on his role at the LAUSD, Sal Randazzo had a twenty-eight-year career in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), most of which was spent here in the Los Angeles area. He held several roles within the FBI, to include Supervisor of the Los Angeles Filed Offices’ Civil Rights squad, and the Assistant Special Agent in Charge over the White-Collar Crime programs.

Becky Yang O'Malley Headshot

Becky Yang O'Malley

Membership Director

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Becky Yang O'Malley (Membership Director) has 20 years of consulting experience in providing forensic accounting, finance and economic analyses for civil and criminal litigation matters and fraud investigations, including breach of contract, class actions, partnership disputes, fraudulent conveyances, alter-ego issues, and misappropriation of assets. Having been involved in numerous engagements, she is knowledgeable in a wide range of industries including construction, real estate, manufacturing, healthcare, financial institutions, and entertainment.

Becky has extensive experience conducting reactive investigations, proactive compliance engagements, and shadow investigations for public and private companies and not-for-profit entities, involving issues such as allegations of financial fraud, corruption, misappropriation, and employee misconduct. Her experience in this area includes leveraging sophisticated data analytics techniques, such as acquiring, extracting, converting, standardizing, and applying statistical analysis in order to analyze large volumes of accounting data.

Becky is also well-versed in the calculation of economic damages, the preparation of findings reports, and the evaluation of damages claims submitted by opposing counsel. She works directly with counsel to prepare cross examination questions and to develop trial exhibits. Additionally, she assists counsel with discovery, including developing and responding to requests for production and interrogatories, and reviews documents produced by litigators to identify those relevant to a damages opinion.

Prior to joining B. Riley Advisory Services (formerly GlassRatner), Becky has held leadership positions with several national public accounting firms. Becky has also developed and presented various learning events on forensic accounting and fraud issues. She is currently the Vice President of Training and on the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

Becky graduated from Boston College with a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences degree in English, and a minor in Computer Science.

Lieut. Stephan Margolis (Ret.) Headshot

Jonathan Huynh

Communications Director

David Villasenor Headshot

David Villasenor

Secretary

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David Villasenor (Secretary) is a GRC Account Executive for Aston Carter. Aston Carter is the largest GRC Staffing firm in the US, supporting 20 of the top 30 financial institutions in North America. He has been in the staffing industry for 8 years and has expertise in recruiting, retention, businesses development, account management, labor markets, and the labor trends. He successfully built out Aston Carter’s Accounting & Finance San Diego Branch and previously was San Diego Chapter President for IMA (Institute for management Accountants). He is now leading the build out of the Governance, Risk, and Compliance Branch for Southern California.

Jannies Burlingame Headshot

Jannies Burlingame

Treasurer

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Jannies Burlingame (Treasurer) most recently served as the Executive Director of Internal Audit for Polaris Pharmaceutical Inc. and played a key role in achieving their Asia IPO by building the risk management framework from the ground up. Her contributions resulted in reaching a successful level of regulatory compliance both domestically and internationally.  

Jannies is also the founder and Principal Consultant of SS&B Global Consulting Corporation, which specializes in delivering business solutions to Fortune 1000 Companies in the areas of risk and audit advisory. Throughout her collective 20+ year tenure in audit which started with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Jannies worked in a variety of industries including Bio-Pharmaceutical, Banking, Tech., Tele-communications, and Entertainment, either as a leader or key member of audit engagement team.

A National James Burn Scholar from the University of Southern California Leventhal School of Accounting, as well as a proud Wolverine from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Business School, Jannies has a perpetual and insatiable desire for knowledge.

As a trilingual audit professional, Jannies has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, spearheading multilingual audits. With 900+ hours of speaking experience, she has trained numerous global corporations on flowcharts, audit methodology, risk management, Sarbanes-Oxley/J-SOX, and Emotional/Cultural Intelligence (EI/CI). She is most passionate about educating her fellow auditors on how to develop their EQ skills to become more valuable team members and leaders in the profession.

Jannies’ dissertation topic is “Communication and Negotiation Tactics in the Virtual Setting.” This topic is a combination of her passion in learning more about EI and applying it to improve communication strategies for business professionals. Her plan is to publish a book on the topic based on her research.

Jannies Burlingame Headshot

Victor Cardona

Chapter Advisor

See What Certified Financial Crime Specialists Are Saying

"The CFCS tests the skills necessary to fight financial crime. It's comprehensive. Passing it should be considered a mark of high achievement, distinguishing qualified experts in this growing specialty area."

KENNETH E. BARDEN 

(JD, Washington)

"It's a vigorous exam. Anyone passing it should have a great sense of achievement."

DANIEL DWAIN

(CFCS, Official Superior

de Cumplimiento Cidel

Bank & Trust Inc. Nueva York)

"The exam tests one's ability to apply concepts in practical scenarios. Passing it can be a great asset for professionals in the converging disciplines of financial crime."

MORRIS GUY

(CFCS, Royal Band of

Canada, Montreal)

"The Exam is far-reaching. I love that the questions are scenario based. I recommend it to anyone in the financial crime detection and prevention profession."

BECKI LAPORTE

(CFCS, CAMS Lead Compliance

Trainer, FINRA, Member Regulation

Training, Washington, DC)

"This certification comes at a very ripe time. Professionals can no longer get away with having siloed knowledge. Compliance is all-encompassing and enterprise-driven."

KATYA HIROSE
CFCS, CAMS, CFE, CSAR
Director, Global Risk
& Investigation Practice
FTI Consulting, Los Angeles

READY TO BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY TOWARDS
CFCS CERTIFICATION?