Part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog: The Certified Fraud Examiner examination from ACFE launched in its new three-section form on June 2, 2026: Fraud Schemes and Financial Crimes (120 questions), Fraud Investigations and Legal Issues (120 questions) and Fraud Prevention and Deterrence (70 questions), each a separate closed-book sitting through Prometric, requiring ≥75% in each of the three sections. This guide explains the format, the eligibility points system, all 44 domains and how to study each section.
The program is in the works, built on ACFE’s published outline for this examination. Join the notify list and we will email you when enrollment opens — then use this guide to plan your preparation section by section.
The CFE examination changed fundamentally in 2026. ACFE’s 2024 job analysis study produced a new examination that launched on June 2, 2026, and the old four-section examination — the structure most study material on the market still describes — was retired and is no longer available. The new examination has three sections instead of four, a re-weighted content outline of 44 domains, and the same uncompromising scoring rule the credential has always demanded in spirit: each section stands or falls on its own. This guide describes the current examination only: its three sittings, its eligibility points system, its published passing standard stated exactly as ACFE states it, and a walk of every section and domain with a study method for each part.
Which examination is this guide about?
One examination: the Certified Fraud Examiner exam from ACFE, in its June 2026 form, delivered as three separate closed-book, closed-notes sittings through Prometric — at test centers or by ProProctor remote proctoring. ACFE is the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, and the CFE is its flagship credential. The examination’s body of knowledge is drawn from the Fraud Examiners Manual. Everything in this guide — the section names, the domain weights, the eligibility values — follows the June 2026 Candidate Handbook; where the retired examination differed, the difference is flagged rather than blended.
The real exam at a glance
| Fact of record | Detail |
|---|---|
| Credential | Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) |
| Certifying body | ACFE (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners) |
| Current examination | The new three-section examination launched June 2, 2026; the old four-section examination is retired and no longer available |
| Format | Three sections, each a separate closed-book, closed-notes timed examination of multiple-choice questions: Fraud Schemes and Financial Crimes (120 questions, 2.5 hours), Fraud Investigations and Legal Issues (120 questions, 2.5 hours), and Fraud Prevention and Deterrence (70 questions, 1.5 hours) — 310 questions and 6.5 hours in total, taken as separate sittings |
| Delivery | Computer-based through Prometric, at test centers or by ProProctor remote proctoring |
| Passing standard | ≥75% in each of the three sections. There is no combined or averaged score; unanswered questions count as incorrect |
| Results | Prometric emails a Score Report Assessment within 24 hours (usually within an hour), with per-domain proficiency benchmarks; ACFE does not disclose which items were answered correctly or incorrectly |
| Retakes | Up to 5 attempts per section; a 30-day waiting period applies after the third attempt; retake fee $110 per failed section |
| Eligibility | ACFE associate membership in good standing, plus 40 eligibility points to sit the exam; certification requires 50 points plus a minimum of 2 years of fraud-related professional experience |
| Exam application fee | $480 per the June 2026 Candidate Handbook — fees are set by ACFE, so confirm the current amount at acfe.com |
| Maintenance | 20 CPE credits per year — at least 10 directly related to fraud detection and deterrence, and 2 in ethics |
Who can sit for the CFE?
You must be an ACFE associate member in good standing, of high moral character, and bound by the ACFE Code of Professional Ethics. ACFE then scores your background on the points system published in the Candidate Handbook. Forty points are required to sit the exam; certification itself requires 50 points plus a minimum of two years of fraud-related professional experience. The Handbook’s values are: a bachelor’s degree or higher, 40 points; an associate degree, 20 points; each completed year of college without a degree, 10 points, with 24 credit hours counting as one year; an approved professional certification, 10 points; and fraud-related experience at 10 points for two years, 20 for four, 30 for six, 40 for eight and 50 for ten. Two years of fraud-related experience may substitute for each year of academic study. Points and experience can be completed up to five years after you pass your last section, and passed-section results remain valid for five years from that last passed section. Application review takes about three to five business days, and final certification review about three weeks after passing. ACFE’s points calculator is the authority on your own total — use it early, while a shortfall can still be repaired.
How is the CFE exam scored?
ACFE’s standard is ≥75% in each of the three sections, stated exactly that way. Read the rule as the per-section rule it is: there is no combined score and no averaging across sections, so strength in one section cannot rescue another, and unanswered questions count as incorrect — a blank answer is a wrong answer with none of a guess’s upside. Prometric emails a Score Report Assessment within 24 hours of each sitting, usually within an hour, showing per-domain proficiency benchmarks; ACFE does not disclose which items were answered correctly or incorrectly, so the domain benchmarks are the diagnostic you plan any retake around. A section may be attempted up to five times; a 30-day waiting period applies after the third attempt, each retake of a failed section costs $110, and failing a section in five attempts expires all results and eligibility, with a two-year wait to reapply.
What changed in the 2026 examination?
Structure first: four sections became three. The old Financial Transactions and Fraud Schemes section maps onto the new Fraud Schemes and Financial Crimes section; the old Fraud Prevention and Deterrence section maps onto the new section of the same name; and credit for the new Fraud Investigations and Legal Issues section requires having passed both the old Law and the old Investigation sections. Weighting second: the new outline publishes per-domain question counts across 44 domains — 20 in the schemes section, 16 in the investigations section and 8 in the prevention section — and the weights moved with the structure, most visibly in the prevention section, where fraud risk assessment alone now carries a fifth of the section. Continuity third: old section passes remain valid for five years, the points system and the per-section passing standard carry over in substance, and the body of knowledge still rests on the Fraud Examiners Manual. Candidates holding pre-2026 materials should treat them as background reading at best; the outline below is the syllabus for the current sittings.
| Exam section (June 2026 examination) | Real exam | Practice questions | In the simulation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fraud Schemes and Financial Crimes | 120 questions · 2.5 hours | 580 | 60 |
| Fraud Investigations and Legal Issues | 120 questions · 2.5 hours | 580 | 60 |
| Fraud Prevention and Deterrence | 70 questions · 1.5 hours | 340 | 35 |
Section 1 — Fraud Schemes and Financial Crimes, domain by domain
What does the asset misappropriation cluster cover? (Fraudulent disbursements 13 percent; cash receipts 5 percent; inventory and other assets 2 percent)
The largest cluster in the section, and in occupational fraud generally. Fraudulent disbursements — the single heaviest domain on the examination at 13 percent — covers billing schemes, payroll schemes, expense reimbursement schemes, check and payment tampering, and register disbursements: the methods by which an insider causes the organisation to pay out value it should not pay. Cash receipts covers the mirror image: skimming receipts before they are recorded, larceny of receipts after recording, and fraudulent write-offs and refunds. Inventory and other assets covers misuse and larceny of non-cash assets, from inventory schemes to the personal use of organisational property. Each scheme is examined three ways: how it is perpetrated, which control prevents it, and which red flag, reconciliation or analysis detects it.
How should you prepare for the asset misappropriation cluster? Build a scheme-by-scheme grid — perpetrator, point of attack in the transaction cycle, preventive control, detective signal — and drill the grid inside fact patterns, because the examination presents the register, the vendor file or the refund queue first and asks what it shows.
The scheme is usually identifiable from where the money left the cycle: before recording, after recording, or through a disbursement the organisation was tricked into making.
What do accounting concepts and financial statement fraud cover? (6 percent and 4 percent)
Accounting concepts supplies the language the rest of the section speaks: the accounting equation, revenue and expense recognition, accruals, reserves and the mechanics by which transactions become financial statements. Financial statement fraud then examines the deliberate distortion of those statements — fictitious or timed revenue, concealed liabilities and expenses, improper asset valuations and inadequate disclosures — together with the analysis that detects it: ratio and trend analysis, vertical and horizontal analysis, and the red flags in the relationship between earnings and cash flow.
How should you prepare for accounting concepts and financial statement fraud? Learn the concepts as mechanisms, not definitions: for each reporting manipulation, be able to say which account moved, which way the statement bent, and which comparison would expose it.
When earnings rise while operating cash flow falls, the scenario is telling you where to look — the examination rewards candidates who follow that signal.
What do corruption, procurement fraud and money laundering cover? (6 percent, 8 percent and 7 percent)
Corruption covers bribery and illegal gratuities, conflicts of interest in purchasing and sales, bid rigging and economic extortion — schemes where the fraudster profits through influence rather than through the organisation’s assets directly. Procurement fraud, at 8 percent the section’s second-largest domain, follows the purchasing cycle: needs and specification manipulation, bid avoidance and splitting, collusive bidding, and contract and delivery fraud. Money laundering covers the placement, layering and integration of criminal proceeds, the methods used to move and disguise value, and the controls and reporting structures that answer them.
How should you prepare for corruption, procurement fraud and money laundering? Study these domains by relationship and by stage: who benefits, whose duty was compromised, and — for laundering — at which stage of the cycle the facts sit, because the control that answers placement is not the control that answers layering.
Separate the bribe-payer, the bribe-taker and the organisation harmed in every corruption scenario; items are decided by those roles.
What do the remaining scheme domains cover? (Payment fraud 6 percent; cyberfraud 6 percent; and the 3–4 percent domains)
Payment fraud and cyberfraud carry 6 percent each: payment fraud spans check, card and electronic payment methods and their controls, while cyberfraud covers computer-based schemes, social engineering and the misuse of systems to commit or conceal fraud. The remaining domains each carry 3 or 4 percent and none can safely be skipped across a 120-question section: theft of data and intellectual property; identity theft; financial institution fraud; securities fraud; insurance fraud; health care fraud; consumer fraud and scams; bankruptcy fraud; tax fraud; government and public sector fraud. Fraud Examiners Manual concepts are tested by substance — the elements of the scheme, its typical perpetrators and victims, and its prevention and detection — and never by recall of a statute’s section number.
How should you prepare for the remaining scheme domains? Work them as a recognition circuit: for each domain hold the scheme’s signature transaction, its most common setting, and its first red flag, then rotate through the set in mixed drills so recognition survives interleaving.
Breadth domains are where prepared candidates separate themselves: each is small alone, but together they are roughly two-fifths of the section.
Section 2 — Fraud Investigations and Legal Issues, domain by domain
What do planning, evidence and data cover? (Planning and conducting a fraud examination 6 percent; collecting evidence 11 percent; basic principles of evidence 7 percent; data analysis and reporting tools 5 percent; sources of information 6 percent; tracing assets 5 percent)
Collecting evidence is the section’s heaviest domain at 11 percent: the forms evidence takes, how it is obtained, documented and preserved, and the chain of custody that keeps it usable. Basic principles of evidence supplies the rules underneath — relevance, hearsay and its exceptions, privilege and admissibility. Planning and conducting a fraud examination covers predication, engagement scope, the fraud examination team and the order of work. Data analysis and reporting tools, sources of information and tracing assets cover the examiner’s information base: public and proprietary records, database and document sources, analytical techniques, and following value through accounts and entities to the assets it became.
How should you prepare for planning, evidence and data? Learn the sequence as a chain and test every link: an examination without predication, evidence without a preserved chain, or an analysis built on an unreliable source each fails at the link that was skipped.
Ask of every investigative step: was there a basis for it, was it lawful, and can its product be proved later? Those three questions answer most of this cluster.
What do the legal domains cover? (Legal issues in conducting investigations 8 percent; the law related to fraud 7 percent; overview of the legal system 3 percent; criminal prosecutions 7 percent; non-criminal actions 8 percent)
Legal issues in conducting investigations covers the constraints on the examiner: privacy, defamation, false imprisonment, employee and suspect rights, and the legal exposure a careless investigation creates. The law related to fraud covers the elements of the principal fraud offences and civil wrongs — tested as elements and application, including the substance of regimes such as the FCPA and the UK Bribery Act, mail and wire fraud, perjury and conspiracy, and the burdens of proof that attach to each route. Overview of the legal system supplies the structure of courts and process. Criminal prosecutions covers referral, charging, trial process and the examiner’s role within it; non-criminal actions, at 8 percent, covers the civil route — filing, discovery, remedies and recovery — and when it serves the victim better than the criminal route.
How should you prepare for the legal domains? Study elements, not citations: for each wrong, hold its required elements, its burden of proof and its remedy, then practise choosing between the criminal and civil routes on the facts given.
The recurring decision in this cluster is route selection: the same fraud can support both routes, and the credited answer turns on purpose, burden and recoverability.
What do interviews, covert operations, reporting and testifying cover? (Interview theory and application 9 percent; admission-seeking interviews 6 percent; covert operations 5 percent; report writing 3 percent; testifying 4 percent)
Interview theory and application, at 9 percent, covers the structure of the investigative interview: planning, question types and sequencing, reading responses, and the difference between information-gathering interviews and interviews of suspects. Admission-seeking interviews covers the distinct discipline of interviewing a subject believed culpable — the order of presentation, theme development and obtaining the admission and the signed statement. Covert operations covers surveillance and undercover work and their legal and ethical limits. Report writing covers the fraud examination report: organisation, clarity, and writing that withstands scrutiny by counsel and the court. Testifying covers the examiner as witness: preparation, direct and cross-examination, and presenting findings credibly.
How should you prepare for interviews, covert operations, reporting and testifying? Learn interviewing as a sequence with a purpose at each stage — information before confrontation, documents before admissions — and reporting as the discipline of writing only what the evidence supports.
An admission sought before the documentary record exists is the classic sequencing error in this cluster; the examination tests it from several directions.
Section 3 — Fraud Prevention and Deterrence, domain by domain
What does the prevention section cover? (Fraud risk assessment 20 percent; fraud prevention programs 16 percent; ethics for fraud examiners 15 percent; fraud risk management 14 percent; auditors’ responsibilities 11 percent; understanding financial crime 10 percent; corporate governance 8 percent; management’s responsibilities 6 percent)
Fraud risk assessment, at 20 percent, is the section’s centre: identifying the schemes an organisation is exposed to, judging their likelihood and impact, weighing existing controls, and setting risk tolerance and response. Fraud prevention programs, at 16 percent, covers the program itself — policies, hotlines and reporting channels, training, hiring and promotion practices, and the tone that makes controls real. Ethics for fraud examiners, at 15 percent, applies the ACFE Code of Professional Ethics to the dilemmas examiners actually face. Fraud risk management, at 14 percent, covers the governance of the whole discipline: ownership, response plans, investigation protocols and ongoing monitoring. Auditors’ and management’s fraud-related responsibilities divide the duties of detection and response between those who run the organisation and those who audit it, and understanding financial crime grounds the section in the established research picture of occupational fraud — tips as the most common detection method, and the typical duration and loss patterns of schemes. Corporate governance covers the board, audit committee and oversight structures within which prevention operates.
How should you prepare for the prevention section? Give risk assessment the first and largest block of study, keep assessment and management as separate disciplines in your notes, and practise ethics scenarios deliberately rather than assuming professional instinct will carry a 15 percent domain.
In prevention scenarios the credited answer is usually the one that acts before the scheme starts — a control, a channel or a governance step — rather than the one that investigates best afterwards.
What separates strong candidates across all three sections? Strong candidates answer from the mechanism rather than the label: they can say how the scheme moved value, which control should have interrupted it, what the examiner may lawfully do next, and which filing, route or governance step answers — in the right order. Weak preparation shows up as schemes recognised only in textbook form, investigation steps taken out of sequence, and prevention answers that reach for investigation when the question asked for a control. Drill in scenario form, review every error the same day, and revisit each section after several days so retention, not recognition, carries you.
How should you study for the CFE?
Study section by section, because you pass section by section. A strong schemes result cannot carry a weak prevention section: each sitting must reach ACFE’s standard on its own. Take the section drills separately and track each section against that standard rather than watching a single blended figure.
In Section 1, learn each scheme three ways. How it works, which control prevents it, and which red flag or analysis detects it. Fraudulent disbursements alone are 13 percent of the section — billing, payroll, expense and check-tampering schemes deserve the deepest work.
In Section 2, let judgment beat memorisation. Predication before investigating, evidence integrity, interview sequencing, and knowing when the civil route beats the criminal route are applied skills. Work the scenarios, not just the definitions.
In Section 3, separate assessment from management. Assessing fraud risk — identifying schemes, judging likelihood and impact, weighing controls — is a different discipline from managing it through governance, response plans and monitoring. The examination tests the distinction, and ethics dilemmas make up a large share of the section.
Ignore study material built to the old exam. Anything organised around the retired four sections describes an examination that has not existed since June 2, 2026.
How should you read your practice results?
Read results section by section and then domain by domain, the way ACFE reports them: the Score Report Assessment’s per-domain proficiency benchmarks exist because a single sitting figure cannot show where a section was lost. Split every domain’s misses by cause before choosing what to study next: scheme misses, where a method inside a fact pattern was not recognised, repair with scenario drilling rather than rereading; sequence misses, where an investigation or interview step was taken out of order, repair by rebuilding the chain for that process and only then returning to items; and distinction misses, where two close concepts — assessment against management, skimming against larceny, the civil against the criminal burden — were swapped, repair by writing the distinction out in your own words and testing it in mixed practice. Re-test each repaired section separately after several days, because readiness is three judgments, and a section that stays thin across repeated drills should take hours from your strongest section until the picture balances.
What does each sitting itself demand?
Two of the sittings allow 150 minutes for 120 questions — 75 seconds per question — and the prevention sitting allows 90 minutes for 70, a slightly gentler pace that its concentrated weighting does not make easier. Because unanswered questions count as incorrect, there is never a reason to leave an item blank: mark and return rather than stall, and reserve the final minutes of each sitting for the marked items. Remember that each sitting is a separate closed-book examination with its own standard: the preparation that matters in the room is the section drill record for that section, not a blended practice average. Results arrive by email, usually within an hour, so the diagnostic for any retake — the per-domain benchmarks — is in hand while the sitting is still fresh in memory.
Frequently asked questions
How many questions are on the CFE exam, and how long is it? 310 multiple-choice questions in total, taken as three separate closed-book sittings through Prometric: Fraud Schemes and Financial Crimes (120 questions, 2.5 hours), Fraud Investigations and Legal Issues (120 questions, 2.5 hours), and Fraud Prevention and Deterrence (70 questions, 1.5 hours).
What score do I need to pass the CFE exam? ACFE’s standard is ≥75% in each of the three sections. There is no combined or averaged score: a section below that mark must be retaken even if the other two sections are strong, and unanswered questions count as incorrect.
Is this guide about the current CFE exam? Yes. This guide follows the new three-section examination that launched on June 2, 2026, and the content outline in ACFE’s June 2026 Candidate Handbook. Material built to the old four-section outline describes a retired exam.
What happened to the old four-section exam? It was retired when the new examination launched on June 2, 2026. The old Financial Transactions and Fraud Schemes section maps to the new Fraud Schemes and Financial Crimes section; old Fraud Prevention and Deterrence maps to the new section of the same name; and the new Fraud Investigations and Legal Issues section requires having passed both old Law and old Investigation. Old passes remain valid for five years.
Who is eligible for the CFE? You must be an ACFE associate member in good standing and hold 40 eligibility points to sit the exam. Certification requires 50 points plus a minimum of two years of fraud-related professional experience, which can be completed up to five years after passing the last section.
How do the eligibility points work? Under the June 2026 Handbook: a bachelor’s degree or higher is worth 40 points, an associate degree 20, each completed year of college without a degree 10 (24 credit hours count as one year), an approved professional certification 10, and fraud-related experience 10 points per two years up to 50. ACFE’s points calculator is the authority on your own total.
What happens if I fail a section? You may attempt a section up to five times; a 30-day waiting period applies after the third attempt, and each retake of a failed section costs $110. Failing a section in five attempts expires all results and eligibility, with a two-year wait to reapply. Your score report’s per-domain proficiency benchmarks show where the section was lost.
How soon do CFE results arrive? Prometric emails the Score Report Assessment within 24 hours, usually within an hour, with per-domain proficiency benchmarks. ACFE does not disclose which individual items were answered correctly or incorrectly.
Does the practice match the real exam’s structure? The practice reproduces the examination’s outline, weights and domain coverage, with one disclosed difference of structure: the real examination is three separate sittings, while the program’s timed simulation is a single combined run of 155 questions in 195 minutes — exactly half the real scale — alongside three section drills that mirror each sitting separately.
How is the practice simulation scored? It reports a 70 percent practice benchmark as a study gauge. That benchmark is a PassProfessor study aid, not ACFE’s standard — ACFE’s standard is ≥75% in each of the three sections, and no combined score can reproduce it.
Are these ACFE’s actual examination questions? No. Every PassProfessor question is original, written to ACFE’s published June 2026 content outline. The companion program carries 1,500 original practice questions with an explanation for every question.
What does the CFE exam cost? The exam application fee is $480 per the June 2026 Candidate Handbook, and each retake of a failed section costs $110. Fees are set by ACFE — confirm the current amounts at acfe.com.
How do CFEs maintain the credential? With 20 CPE credits per year — at least 10 directly related to fraud detection and deterrence, and 2 in ethics. CPE records are kept for three years, and new CFEs are exempt for their first reporting period.
When will enrollment open? The program is in the works. Join the notify list on the companion program page or on this guide and we will email you when enrollment opens.
Disclaimer
PassProfessor is an independent exam-preparation provider; this guide is not endorsed by, affiliated with or sponsored by ACFE. Certified Fraud Examiner and CFE are marks of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, used on this page as a factual reference to the certifying body’s examination. Examination details on this page are drawn from the sources recorded below and are current as of November 2026; ACFE’s official publications govern if anything here differs from them. The credential is awarded by ACFE alone when its requirements are complete.