Mark J. Nigrini is on the Business & Economics faculty at West Virginia University. Nigrini’s research passion for many years has been a phenomenon known as Benford’s Law. There are predictable patterns to the digits in lists of numbers. The smaller digits (1s, 2s, and 3s) are expected to occur more often in scientific and financial data. Benford’s Law has proved itself to be valuable to auditors in their quest to uncover fraud in corporate data. Nigrini’s current research addresses advanced work on Benford’s Law, employee fraud, the use of analytics in forensic accounting, and the accuracy of COVID statistics.

Nigrini is the author of Forensic Analytics (Wiley, 2020) which describes analytic tests used to detect fraud, errors, estimates, and biases in financial data, and also Benford's Law (Wiley, 2012). In 2014 Nigrini published an article in the Journal of Accountancy that was co-authored with Nathan Mueller, a fraudster, who at the time was incarcerated in a federal prison. That article won the Lawler award for the best article in the Journal of Accountancy in 2014. His work has been featured in The Financial Times, New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal and he has published papers on Benford’s Law in academic journals and professional publications. These journals include the highly regarded Journal of Accounting, Auditing, and Finance and Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory. Nigrini published the lead article in the new premier forensic accounting journal, the Journal of Forensic Accounting Research. His radio interviews have included the BBC in London, and NPR in the United States. His television interviews have included an interview on a fraud saga for the Evil Twins series for the Investigation Discovery Channel. He is a regular presenter at the ACFE’s Global Conferences. He regularly presents professional seminars for accountants and auditors in the U.S and abroad.