Valid8 Financial helps forensic accountants and investigators compress months of manual evidence work into hours. The platform automates the extraction, reconciliation, and verification of data from bank statements and ERP systems, providing a defensible, evidence-first foundation for professional opinions, litigation, and regulatory review. By eliminating the bottlenecks of data preparation, Valid8 allows teams to follow the money with unmatched speed and clarity, taking on more cases without adding headcount. Hundreds of firms rely on Valid8 for the world’s most complex financial investigations. The company holds numerous patents for its Verified Financial Intelligence (VFI) technology and has received multiple industry recognitions. Headquartered in Boulder, CO.
Tod McDonald is the founder of Valid8 Financial. Early in his career, Tod was an auditor with EY and has spent decades navigating complex financial situations, including leading an investigation that unraveled a $300 million real estate investment Ponzi scheme. Motivated by this experience, he co-founded Valid8 Financial to build a Verified Financial Intelligence solution to expedite data prep, eliminate sample risk and improve the speed and quality of rendering professional opinions on complex financial cases.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career, especially one that shaped your leadership approach at your current company?
I led the investigation into Washington state’s largest Ponzi scheme. Darren Berg, founder of Meridian Mortgage, convinced over 800 investors to invest in what he claimed were secure real estate mortgages. It turned out he was investing only about half the money he had promised and spending the rest on a luxury lifestyle that included multiple mansions, yachts and private jets. Berg’s victims lost at least $300 million.
We had to rebuild the entire financial history from scratch using subpoenaed bank statements from dozens of accounts across multiple institutions. The work took years, but we identified tens of millions in recoverable assets and supported litigation efforts to recover as much as possible for victims.
The story took a dramatic turn when Berg escaped federal prison after serving just five years of his 18-year sentence. He’s still on the run today.
What initially brought you to this specific career path, and how did it lead to your role in this company?
The Berg Ponzi scheme inspired my vision for Valid8 Financial, a leading provider of forensic accounting software for financial crime. The investigation took two years of painstaking work to reconstruct the flow of funds. We reviewed hundreds of thousands of financial transactions.
This analysis could have been done in weeks with modern software. I saw the opportunity to build technology that enables accountants to efficiently and effectively assess the entire scope of financial transactions. Our goal is to enable forensic accountants and financial investigators to quickly analyze banking records and accounting data to create objective, court-ready evidence.
What makes your company stand out from competitors in the market? Can you share an example that highlights this?
Valid8 is built specifically for financial investigations. The platform provides Verified Financial Intelligence (VFI). Our software enables comprehensive population analysis and matches every transaction to its source document, allowing investigators to produce auditable, court-ready evidence. Unlike tools designed primarily for general accounting workflows or financial analysis, Valid8 is designed around the evidentiary requirements of complex financial investigations.
Valid8 also offers visualization tools to show money movement. These graphics simplify the evidence so that all stakeholders, especially a judge and jury, can understand it.
Our software supported the Schenectady County District Attorney’s Office in securing convictions in an elder exploitation case and a child neglect and homicide investigation.
Are you working on any exciting new products or projects? How do you think this innovation will positively impact your customers?
Our Valid8 Financial GovCloud recently achieved the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program’s (FedRAMP’s) In Process designation under the sponsorship of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection.
Achieving FedRAMP In Process showcases Valid8’s organizational commitment to security, compliance and serving the public sector. A FedRAMP certification helps agencies at the federal, state, and local levels manage complex, high-volume financial data with the trust and rigor the public sector demands.
Can you share a significant challenge your company faced and how you overcame it? What key lesson did that experience provide?
The hardest early conversation was with investors who saw forensic accounting as a niche. A few thousand practitioners, hired after fraud is already discovered. Too small.
They were sizing the wrong thing. Forensic accounting is the market of cases that are known and funded: someone has already found the problem and someone is already paying to prove it. That’s a small fraction of the fraud that exists. Most cases never get a name, a budget or an investigator, because manual investigation costs more than the loss. Regulators call it a threshold. We saw it as the market.
The reframe was simple. We weren’t building for the cases that already get investigated. We were building for the ones that don’t by making verification cheap enough that the threshold drops. Every dollar of fraud below that line is demand nobody is serving.
The lesson here is that when investors call your market a niche, check whether they’re measuring today’s paying customers or the problem itself. The known cases are the tip. The business is the rest of the iceberg.
The ACFE’s 2026 Report to the Nations estimates organizations lose 5% of revenue to fraud every year and calls occupational fraud likely the largest and most costly form of financial crime in the world.
In just a few words, what differentiates your leadership role from others in the company? What impact does this have on company culture or product success?
I’ve done the job our customers do. I spent years as a practicing CPA and forensic accountant tracing money by hand through bankruptcies and fraud cases. Others on the team own the technology or a market. I own whether the output survives in a courtroom. That single standard drives the product and the culture: every finding traces to a bank record.
Learn more at valid8financial.com.
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