T

he recent trial over alleged bribery in the election of Bank Indonesia’s senior deputy governor has left many to wonder what the truth behind the relationship between two suspects, Nunun Nurbaeti and former Bank Indonesia Senior Deputy Governor Miranda Goeltom, really is.

On the one hand, Nunun testified that she and Miranda were close friends and that she had helped her to unlawfully win the Bank Indonesia Senior Deputy Governor election in 2004. On the other hand, Miranda insisted that they were just “friends” and not “best friends”.

The case itself gained fame, particularly because of Nunun’s disappearance overseas and later becoming an Interpol fugitive for months until her arrest in December 2011.

In another graft trial, Angelina Sondakh, a suspect in the case of Southeast Asian Games athletes’ village scandal, is alleged to have lied about when she began using a BlackBerry.

There have been more than a few occasions during trials where the alleged offenders are seen as not being honest about some matters related to their involvement in the alleged offences.

Many see this as an effort to protect themselves or at least their accomplices.

As far as studies in psychology are concerned, lying is believed to be part of human nature. For example, a well known study in psychology at the University of Southern California in 1977 established that people lied as many as 200 times each day.

Another study from the University of Massachusetts in 2002 proposed that more than half of all people lied an average of nearly three times during a 10-minute conversation.

Another study by Dr. Vasudevi Reddy of the University of Portsmouth even concluded that even toddlers are starting to lie at an earlier age (e.g. fake crying and pretend laughter to get attention), some even as early as 6 months.

Studies have also been carried out in the area of lie detection. Many studies found that average people can detect lies with slightly above 50 percent accuracy. A study by Paul Ekman and Maureen O’Sillivan even argued that professionals, such as law enforcers and judges, are often not really doing a better job than average people in detecting lies.

However, studies also suggest that a small number of people (1 out of 400) may have been born with the ability to detect lies with at least 80 percent accuracy.

In the field of fraud investigation, to test the hypotheses regarding fraud allegations, investigators often need to gather evidence through investigative interviews. This is where their knowledge and expertise in lie detection will come in handy. Common methods employed by investigators generally include recognizing verbal and non-verbal clues from the interviewees.

Verbal clues include but are not limited to changes in speech patterns, inconsistencies in telling a story, repetition of the question, selective memory, swearing oaths, answering questions with questions and tolerance for fraudulent conduct. For example, during interviews to uncover corruption cases in Indonesia, a suspect is often bombarded with questions for hours.

It is likely that such questions are designed so as to, among other things, examine the suspects’ consistency in telling their side of the story. Experts believe that generally dishonest people will need three times as much effort to maintain the consistency in telling their story than honest people. When inconsistency occurs, it will become a window for investigators into uncovering the truth about an offence.

Another example of verbal clues is that, as evidences suggest, dishonest people are often able to clearly memorize unimportant events but they seem unable to do so on important facts (selective memory).

Non-verbal clues are all about one’s body language such as “hands over mouth” expression, crossing
of arms, lip movements and fleeing positions.

For example, crossing one’s arms is known to be a common defensive reaction to investigative questions that cause discomfort to him or her. For investigators who are very skillful at reading people they often use the so-called “microexpression” clues to spot lies.

A microexpression is essentially a brief (typically between 1/25th a second and 1 second) and often involuntary (much more difficult to fake) facial expression as a response to a certain emotion.

Uncovering lies is an important element in a fraud investigation. After all, deception is an essential ingredient of fraud. Although some people are natural-born lie detectors, through training and experience an average person’s accuracy in identifying lies can be increased to more than 50 percent.

Of course, spotting fraud offenders’ lies alone will not guarantee that a case will be uncovered. Such findings should be collaborated with other evidence to piece together the missing pieces of the puzzle.