The ACFE calendar of events is one of the most valuable resources available to fraud examiners at every stage of their career. Whether you are a newly minted Certified Fraud Examiner pursuing your first CPE credits or a seasoned investigator looking to stay current with emerging schemes and regulatory changes, the ACFE's robust schedule of live conferences, virtual summits, regional training seminars, and chapter-level meetings offers something meaningful for every professional. Understanding how to navigate this calendar — and how to choose events strategically — can significantly accelerate your career trajectory and sharpen your investigative skill set.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, headquartered in Austin, Texas, was founded in 1988 and has grown into the world's largest anti-fraud organization, with more than 90,000 members in over 180 countries. The organization publishes its event schedule year-round, spanning both in-person gatherings and live-streaming formats that make participation accessible regardless of your geography or schedule. Core offerings include the flagship Global Fraud Conference held each spring, specialized fraud training institutes, industry-specific workshops, and hundreds of online self-study courses that qualify for CPE credit toward CFE certification maintenance.

For active CFEs, maintaining certification requires accumulating 20 CPE hours annually, with at least 10 of those hours dedicated to fraud-related topics. The ACFE's event calendar is specifically designed to help members satisfy this requirement while simultaneously building domain expertise across financial statement fraud, asset misappropriation, corruption, digital forensics, and interview techniques. Attending even two or three ACFE events per year can comfortably fulfill the annual CPE requirement while expanding your professional network in meaningful ways.

Beyond CPE compliance, acfe events serve a deeper educational mission: they expose practitioners to real-world case studies, expert panel discussions, hands-on workshops, and the latest research from the ACFE's Report to the Nations — the biennial global fraud study that documents fraud statistics, trends, and occupational fraud patterns across dozens of industries. This research-driven agenda keeps the curriculum grounded in current reality rather than outdated theory, making each event genuinely useful for day-to-day investigative work.

Local ACFE chapters add another critical dimension to the events ecosystem. With more than 145 chapters across the United States and additional chapters in dozens of countries, the chapter network brings professional development down to the community level. Chapter events often feature local prosecutors, corporate compliance officers, law enforcement agents, and forensic accountants who share insights specific to regional industries and legal frameworks. These gatherings are typically lower-cost than national conferences, making them an excellent entry point for professionals new to the ACFE community.

Planning your participation in ACFE events requires some advance preparation to maximize both the educational value and the networking opportunities. Registration fees, hotel costs, and travel expenses can add up quickly for multi-day in-person events, so many members develop an annual event budget aligned with their CPE requirements and career development goals. Virtual attendance options, which expanded substantially after 2020, now offer a cost-effective alternative that still delivers live instruction, interactive Q&A with presenters, and real-time peer engagement in digital breakout sessions.

This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the types of events the ACFE offers, how to use the calendar effectively, what to expect at major conferences, how to maximize CPE credit accumulation, and how active event participation can strengthen your preparation for the CFE exam itself. Whether you are budgeting for your first national conference or refining a multi-year professional development roadmap, the information below will help you get the most from everything the ACFE events ecosystem has to offer.

The ACFE Global Fraud Conference stands as the centerpiece of the entire ACFE events calendar, attracting upward of 4,000 anti-fraud professionals annually from government agencies, multinational corporations, public accounting firms, law enforcement, and academia. Held each spring — typically in May or June — the conference rotates between major cities across the United States, with past locations including Nashville, Las Vegas, San Antonio, and Orlando. The 2025 conference returned to Las Vegas and featured more than 100 concurrent educational sessions, six pre-conference workshops, and a technology exhibition hall showcasing the latest tools in fraud detection, data analytics, and digital forensics.

Sessions at the Global Fraud Conference span the full breadth of the CFE Body of Knowledge, organized into tracks that allow attendees to build customized learning agendas. Common tracks include financial crimes and money laundering, corporate fraud and ethics, digital forensics and cyber fraud, fraud risk management, and investigative techniques.

Each session earns between one and four CPE hours, making it entirely feasible to accumulate 15 to 20 CPE credits over the four-day event — enough to satisfy the annual requirement in a single trip. Pre-conference workshops, which require separate registration, offer six-hour deep dives into specialized topics such as fraud data analytics or CFE exam preparation.

Networking at the Global Fraud Conference is arguably as valuable as the formal educational programming. The conference's evening receptions, roundtable luncheons, and first-timers orientation sessions create structured opportunities to connect with peers, mentors, and potential employers. Many attendees report that relationships formed at ACFE conferences have led directly to new job opportunities, referral-based consulting engagements, and long-term professional partnerships. The ACFE also maintains a mobile conference app that facilitates meeting scheduling and session planning, making it easier to make the most of limited networking windows during a busy four-day schedule.

Beyond the flagship event, the ACFE's Fraud Training Institutes deserve special attention from professionals seeking focused skill-building rather than a broad survey of topics. These multi-day workshops are offered several times per year in rotating cities and are limited to smaller class sizes — typically 30 to 50 participants — which allows for a highly interactive learning environment.

Popular institute topics include Conducting Internal Investigations, Fraud Risk Management, and Interviewing Witnesses and Suspects. Each institute runs two to three days and awards 16 to 24 CPE hours, making them one of the most efficient ways to earn substantial credit while developing practical investigative skills you can apply immediately on the job.

Regional fraud conferences, organized in collaboration with ACFE chapters throughout the country, bring high-quality professional development to markets that may not be easily accessible from major hub cities. These events are particularly popular among members in the Southeast, Midwest, and Mountain West regions, where travel costs to national conferences can be prohibitive.

Regional conferences typically span one full day, feature four to six educational sessions, and award eight CPE hours. Speakers at these events often include local federal prosecutors, IRS criminal investigators, corporate compliance officers, and forensic accountants who offer regionally specific perspectives on fraud trends, prosecution strategies, and prevention techniques.

Industry-specific events represent another growing segment of the ACFE's annual schedule. As fraud examiners increasingly specialize in sectors such as healthcare, financial services, government contracting, and real estate, the ACFE has responded by developing events tailored to the unique fraud risks and regulatory environments of those industries. Healthcare fraud conferences, for example, address Medicare and Medicaid billing fraud, pharmaceutical diversion, and kickback schemes — topics that require domain knowledge well beyond the general CFE curriculum. These specialized events allow practitioners to bridge the gap between broad fraud examination competencies and the specific knowledge demands of their industry.

Understanding the ACFE's full event portfolio also helps candidates preparing for the CFE exam strategically time their participation. Attending a CFE exam preparation workshop offered at major conferences or as a standalone training institute provides structured review of all four sections of the CFE exam — Financial Transactions and Fraud Schemes, Law, Investigation, and Fraud Prevention and Deterrence. These prep workshops, facilitated by experienced CFEs and ACFE-approved instructors, combine content review with practice questions and test-taking strategy — a complement to independent study that many candidates find significantly shortens their overall preparation timeline.

Getting the maximum value from ACFE event attendance requires a strategic approach that begins well before you arrive at the venue or log into the virtual platform. The most prepared attendees treat event participation as a project with defined goals, a pre-event research phase, an in-event execution plan, and a post-event follow-up protocol. This structured approach consistently produces better educational outcomes, stronger new professional relationships, and more durable skill acquisition than simply showing up and attending whichever sessions happen to be convenient.

Start your preparation by reviewing the published session catalog at least six weeks before the event. Identify your top 10 to 15 priority sessions based on relevance to your current role, gaps in your knowledge, and subject areas likely to appear on the CFE exam if you are a candidate. Then rank those sessions by importance, because scheduling conflicts are nearly guaranteed at large conferences. Having clear first, second, and third choices for each time slot ensures you never waste time standing outside a full room wondering what to attend next.

Research the presenters for your priority sessions before the event. Review their professional backgrounds, published articles, LinkedIn profiles, and any prior ACFE session recordings available through the member portal. Walking into a session with baseline knowledge of the presenter's expertise and perspective allows you to ask sharper questions, engage more substantively during Q&A, and make a more memorable impression during post-session networking. Presenters at ACFE events are typically senior practitioners who are genuinely interested in meeting engaged audience members — preparation signals professionalism and opens doors.

Networking requires its own preparation strategy. Before the event, identify 10 to 15 specific people you want to meet — these might include speakers whose work you admire, peers at organizations you are interested in, or ACFE leaders who serve on committees relevant to your interests. Use the conference app's attendee directory to find and connect with those individuals digitally before the event begins. A brief LinkedIn message in the week before the conference — noting that you look forward to connecting in person — dramatically increases the likelihood of a productive face-to-face meeting during the event itself.

During the event, balance your time between formal sessions and informal networking. The temptation at a content-rich conference is to attend back-to-back sessions from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, but this approach often produces diminishing returns by day two as cognitive fatigue sets in. Experienced attendees deliberately build breaks into their schedules — using lunch hours, evening receptions, and session transitions as dedicated networking time. A 30-minute conversation with a senior fraud examiner over lunch can be more professionally valuable than an additional hour-long session on a topic you can cover through self-study later.

Post-event follow-up is where most attendees fail to realize the full value of their investment. Within 48 hours of returning from a conference, send personalized follow-up emails to everyone you had a meaningful conversation with. Reference a specific point from your discussion to demonstrate that you were genuinely engaged rather than just collecting business cards.

Connect on LinkedIn with a brief personal note. If you promised to share a resource, article, or referral, fulfill that commitment immediately. This rapid, specific follow-up sets you apart from the hundreds of other people those contacts met at the same event and dramatically increases the probability of building a lasting professional relationship.

Finally, create a post-event learning consolidation routine. Within one week of the conference, review your session notes and identify the three to five most actionable takeaways — specific techniques, frameworks, tools, or case study lessons that you can apply in your current role within the next 30 days. Share these takeaways with your team or manager in a brief written summary. This exercise reinforces retention, demonstrates professional ROI to your employer, and often sparks valuable internal conversations about upgrading fraud prevention or detection practices at your organization.

The relationship between active ACFE event participation and CFE exam preparation is more direct than many candidates realize. The CFE exam tests knowledge across four domains — Financial Transactions and Fraud Schemes, Law, Investigation, and Fraud Prevention and Deterrence — and ACFE events consistently deliver substantive content in all four areas through their session programming. Candidates who attend even one major ACFE conference or training institute before sitting for the exam typically report greater familiarity with exam terminology, a stronger conceptual framework for applying fraud examination principles, and higher confidence going into the test.

Financial Transactions and Fraud Schemes — the largest and most heavily weighted section of the CFE exam — covers asset misappropriation, corruption schemes, and financial statement fraud in considerable depth. The ACFE's Fraud Training Institutes, particularly those focused on financial statement fraud and asset misappropriation, align almost perfectly with the exam's content in these areas. Case studies presented at these institutes often mirror the fact patterns that appear in CFE exam questions, giving candidates practice applying theoretical knowledge to realistic investigative scenarios rather than simply memorizing definitions from a study guide.

The Law section of the CFE exam presents particular challenges for candidates without a legal background, covering concepts such as evidence admissibility, interviewing rights, search and seizure law, and computer crime statutes. ACFE events regularly feature attorneys and law enforcement professionals who present on these topics in plain language accessible to non-lawyers. Sessions on conducting legally defensible investigations, working with law enforcement, and preparing cases for prosecution provide the applied legal context that transforms abstract legal concepts into practical understanding — exactly the kind of comprehension the exam rewards.

Investigation methodology — covering topics such as document examination, interview techniques, public record research, and covert investigations — is perhaps the area where ACFE event participation most directly supplements exam study. The ACFE's interview-focused training institutes, which teach structured approaches to interviewing witnesses and developing admission-seeking strategies, are particularly aligned with exam content. Candidates who have practiced these techniques in a workshop setting develop a more intuitive understanding of the underlying principles than those who study the same material only through text-based self-study.

Fraud Prevention and Deterrence, the fourth CFE exam domain, covers internal controls, corporate governance, fraud risk assessment methodologies, and the psychology of fraud. Many ACFE sessions on this topic feature case studies from real investigations — often presented by the fraud examiners or corporate compliance officers who worked the case — that illustrate how control failures enable fraud and how effective deterrence programs close those gaps. These narratives make abstract control concepts concrete and memorable, which is precisely the kind of deep encoding that supports accurate recall under exam pressure.

One specific event category deserves particular mention for exam candidates: the ACFE's dedicated CFE Exam Preparation Workshops. These workshops are offered as both pre-conference add-ons at the Global Fraud Conference and as standalone events at select times during the year.

Led by experienced CFEs and ACFE-approved instructors, these six-hour sessions provide structured review of all four exam domains, diagnostic practice questions with detailed answer explanations, and test-taking strategies tailored to the CFE exam's unique format. Most candidates who attend these workshops report completing them with a clearer sense of their strongest and weakest knowledge areas — invaluable intelligence for focusing the final weeks of exam preparation.

For candidates who want to combine event participation with a disciplined independent study program, the most effective approach is to attend a training institute or exam prep workshop approximately eight to ten weeks before their planned exam date, use the event to identify remaining knowledge gaps, and then dedicate the remaining study time to targeted review of those specific areas using the ACFE's official study materials and practice examinations.

This sequence ensures that event attendance functions as a diagnostic and reinforcement tool rather than a substitute for systematic content mastery — the combination consistently produces better exam outcomes than either approach alone.

Building a long-term professional development plan around the ACFE events calendar requires thinking beyond the next CPE cycle. The most successful fraud examiners treat their event participation as an evolving curriculum that adapts to changes in their role, their industry, and the broader fraud landscape.

In the early years of a fraud examination career, the priority is typically breadth — attending general conferences that provide exposure to the full range of fraud types and investigative methodologies. As a career matures, the priority typically shifts toward depth, with practitioners selecting specialized institutes and industry-specific events that sharpen expertise in their primary area of practice.

ACFE chapter involvement offers one of the highest return-on-investment paths for long-term career development, yet it is consistently underutilized by members who think of professional development only in terms of large national events. Joining a local chapter's board or committee — as program chair, membership coordinator, or communications officer — provides leadership experience, public speaking opportunities, and visibility within the regional anti-fraud community that national conference attendance alone cannot deliver.

Chapter leaders often develop relationships with the ACFE's national staff and leadership, which can translate into opportunities to present at regional or national events, serve on ACFE committees, or contribute to the organization's educational publications.

Presenting at ACFE events is a professional milestone worth actively pursuing once you have accumulated sufficient investigative experience. The ACFE actively solicits presentation proposals from practitioners and typically opens its call-for-proposals process six to nine months before major events. Accepted presenters receive complimentary registration for the event, significant national or regional visibility within the fraud examination community, and the professional credibility that comes from being recognized by the ACFE as a subject-matter expert. Presentations drawn from real case work — appropriately anonymized — consistently receive the highest attendee ratings and generate the most post-event networking activity.

The ACFE's event ecosystem also intersects with the organization's scholarship and award programs in ways that active event participants are best positioned to leverage. The ACFE Foundation offers multiple scholarship programs for students and early-career professionals pursuing CFE certification, and many scholarship applications are strengthened by demonstrated engagement with the ACFE community through event attendance, chapter participation, and volunteer activity. Award programs — including the Cressey Award for lifetime achievement in fraud deterrence and the Guardian Award for investigative excellence — are often announced at the Global Fraud Conference, creating additional motivation for sustained community engagement.

Corporate and organizational memberships in the ACFE deserve consideration for employers of fraud examination professionals, as these membership tiers typically include significant event registration discounts and access to bundled CPE packages. Organizations that send multiple employees to ACFE events annually can realize substantial cost savings through corporate membership pricing, often recouping the membership investment with the discount on a single conference registration.

For compliance officers, risk managers, and internal audit directors, building ACFE event participation into the department's annual professional development budget ensures that the team maintains current knowledge without incurring ad hoc registration fees each time an event opportunity arises.

Technology is reshaping the ACFE events landscape in meaningful ways. The integration of data analytics, artificial intelligence, and digital forensics tools into fraud examination practice has driven rapid expansion of technology-focused event programming.

Sessions on using Python for fraud data analysis, applying machine learning models to transaction monitoring, and conducting digital forensic examinations of cloud-based evidence now appear regularly in ACFE conference catalogs — content that would have been absent or minimal as recently as five years ago. Practitioners who proactively seek out this technical programming at ACFE events position themselves at the forefront of a transformation that is rapidly redefining what it means to be a competent fraud examiner in the 2020s.

Ultimately, the ACFE calendar of events is most valuable when treated as an integrated professional development ecosystem rather than a collection of individual educational transactions. Each webinar you attend, each chapter meeting you participate in, each training institute you complete, and each conference conversation you have contributes to a cumulative professional identity as a knowledgeable, connected, and committed fraud examination professional.

That identity — built patiently over years of consistent engagement with the ACFE community — is among the most durable career assets a fraud examiner can develop, underpinning advancement opportunities, thought leadership recognition, and the kind of professional reputation that generates referrals and opportunities long after any single event has concluded.