Orange is The New White Collar
- 60% of Companies Reported Actual or Attempted Fraud in 2013
- 5% of total revenues, estimated amount organizations lose to fraud each year
- $140,000 median loss caused per fraud
Who Done It?
Position of Perpetrator in the United States – 753 Cases:
- Employee – 43% ($50,000)
- Manager – 34.3% ($150,000)
- Owner / Executive – 18.5% ($373,000)
- Other – 4.2% ($86,000)
Departments of Perpetrator (in 2012)
- Accounting: 22%
- Operations: 17.4%
- Sales: 12.8%
- Executive/Upper Management: 11.9%
- Customer Service: 6.9%
Common Fraud Schemes
In small businesses
-
- – under 100 employees:
Payroll Fraud
- Target: Money going from business to employees.
- Occurs in 27% of businesses.
- Median Loss: $48,000
- Median duration of fraud: 36 months
- Ghost Employees: Non-existent Paid Employees
- Criminal: Manager or Individual pocketing Ghost Employee salary
- Victim: Employer
- Median Loss: $48,000
- Median duration of fraud: 36 months
- Signs: Paychecks without Taxes
- Duplicated Social Security Numbers & Contact Info.
- Prevention: Randomly require ID to receive paychecks
- Require Direct Deposit
- Worker Misclassification: Pushing taxes onto employees
- Criminal: Employer not sharing tax burden
- Victim: Employee classified as 1090
- Median Loss: $48,000
- Median duration of fraud: 36 months
How does the fraud occur?
- 1099 form is for outsourced independent workers
- Employers tax contribution: 0.0%
- Outsourced worker is responsible for paying all
- Self-Employed Payroll Taxes:
- First $117k of income taxed at 15.3% rate.
- Beyond [$117k] 2.9%.
- W-2 form is for company employees
- Employers and Employee share tax contribution equally:
- First $117k of income taxed at 7.65%
- Beyond [$117k] 1.45%
In Large Businesses:
Accounts Payable Fraud
- Organizations with revenue over $1 Billion
- Target: money going from business to vendors, bills, etc.
- 82% of Payment Fraud is through Checks
- Billing Tampering : causing business to overpay for goods and receiving a share
- Criminal: Employee and/or Vendor
- Victim: Employer
- Median loss: $100k
- Median duration of fraud: 24 months
- Signs: Duplicate Payments, Overpayments
- Prevention: Never have check writer also oversee reconciliation of checking accounts
- Use a third-party data mining tool to regularly analyze transactions
- Vendor Summary Totals
- Above Average Payments To A Vendor
- Duplicate Payment Testing
- Check Tampering : Check payee or amount is altered
- Criminal: Employee
- Victim: Employer
- Median loss: $143k
- Median duration of fraud: 30 months
- Signs: Missing check books
- Misdirected payments to illegitimate vendors not on vendor master file.
- Prevention
- Keep Checkbooks under lock and key
- Verify all vendor records (name, address change, bank account)
In Publicly Traded Businesses:
Financial Statement Fraud:
- Intentional misstatement of financial reports
- Examples: Recording fictitious revenues
- understating reported expenses
- artificially inflating reported assets
- Target: Money coming into the business from investors or creditors
- Criminal: Typically C-Level Executives
- Victim: Investors, creditors, and employees
- Median loss: $1 million (the greatest of all categories)
- Median duration of fraud: 24 months
- Signs: Unusually intricate financial transactions with third-parties
- Unusually rapid revenue and/or profit growth
- Secretive attitude regarding financial information
- Prevention: Frequent analysis on long-term trends comparisons between business units.
- Surprise audits and/or cash counts.
- Anonymous tip hotline for use by employees, vendors and customers.
Sources:
- http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/227689
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewgarrett/2013/09/10/payroll-fraud-a-big-threat-and-how-to-avoid-it
- http://www.buec.udel.edu/jenkinsd/Articles/Keep%20Ghosts%20Off%20the%20Payroll.htm
- http://tentiltwo.com/running-your-business-blog/1099-vs-employee-you-need-to-know-the-difference
- http://www.fbi.gov/scams-safety/fraud
- http://www2.agacgfm.org/tools/FraudPrevention/AccountsPayable.aspx
- http://www2.agacgfm.org/tools/FraudPrevention/AccountsReceivable.aspx
- http://www.crackerjackaccounting.com/2010/01/who-gets-a-1099
- https://www.jpmorgan.com/cm/BlobServer/2014_AFP_Payments_Fraud_Survey.pdf?blobkey=id&blobwhere=1320639355606&blobheader=application/pdf&blobheadername1=Cache-Control&blobheadervalue1=private&blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs
- http://www.sbmonthly.com/?p=2518
- http://www.acfe.com/article.aspx?id=4294968089
- http://taxes.about.com/od/payroll/qt/payroll_basics.htm
- http://www.fraud-magazine.com/article.aspx?id=4294968370
- http://www.acfe.com/uploadedFiles/ACFE_Website/Content/rttn/2012-report-to-nations.pdf