Did you know that it is very likely your company is a victim of fraud? In fact, it's probably happening right now! Fraud takes many forms - some obvious and well known, others subtle and unmarked. This two-part article sheds some light on the topic. Part 1 helps you determine whether your company is vulnerable to (or, indeed, already a victim of) fraud. It discusses fraud in further detail and provides definitions and real-life fraud examples. Part 2 goes on to explain how you can minimize fraud in YOUR company.

What is Fraud?

Companies around the world lose a staggering amount of money to fraud and abuse. According to government and private studies, the following example is typical. A manufacturing company earns $60 million in revenue and $18 million profit per year. Fraud and abuse cost approximately 6% of revenue ($3.6 million). The company's profit margin on revenue is 30%, therefore they need to generate an additional $12 million in revenue (20% additional revenue) just to cover the cost of fraud and abuse. (Source PWC.)

The enactment of the United States Sarbannes Oxley Act of 2002 was a direct result of numerous well-publicized accounting scandals (some may say "frauds") involving high-profile companies. The intent of the Act was to not only close the loopholes that made these transgressions possible, but to also hold companies accountable for those transgressions.

But what exactly is fraud?

The broadest definition of fraud (as per the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, Copyright 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc) is:

"any act, expression, omission, or concealment calculated to deceive another to his or her disadvantage; specifically : a misrepresentation or concealment with reference to some fact material to a transaction that is made with knowledge of its falsity or in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity and with the intent to deceive another and that is reasonably relied on by the other who is injured thereby"

Some Examples of Fraud

By this definition, fraud encompasses such things as negligence in ensuring business expenses are actually incurred, reported on time, or at the accurate dollar amount. It also encompasses reckless disregard in separating personal expenses from business expenses and consistent failure to use due care and follow policies.

Four of the more common forms of fraud and abuse relate to:

1. Travel and entertainment expenses
2. Unauthorized use of corporate credit and purchasing cards
3. Related party transactions
4. Receipt of free or below market-cost goods and services from vendors, suppliers, etc.

And it can be very difficult to actually pinpoint the precise point at which the fraud occurred. Corporate fraud is found in many forms which are not particularly obvious at first glance. For example, companies spend millions on accounting packages, CRM, ERP, and database solutions that have the highest grade of security and data integrity to manage their businesses. Unfortunately, in the majority of cases, this data ends up in spreadsheets where the data integrity is very easily lost. This final stage of the information journey is known as THE FRAGILE LAST MILE. During the fragile last mile, there are typically no controls or standards and no IT accountability, so the information is completely vulnerable to abuse.

For example, changing a plus and minus sign in a spreadsheet caused Fidelity to pay out $2.4 billion in dividends for their Magellan fund. A loss of $1.2 billion became a $2.4 billion dollar payout because of a spreadsheet cell formatting error.

Similarly, CA (Computer Associates) published their financials with a $60 million error due to a tiny spreadsheet mistake.

Spreadsheet error research carried out by audit firms, PWC and KPMG, show that around 9.0% of large spreadsheets contain errors.

How Do You Minimize Fraud in Your Company?

Those who perpetrate fraud include people of all ages, experience levels, salary levels, ethnic backgrounds, genders, geographic regions, and other demographic differentiators. In order to minimize and detect fraud, you need to implement corporate expense management software controls to create an environment where fraud cannot flourish.

The second (and final) article in this series discusses how you can stop fraud from occurring in your company.