According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiner’s (ACFE) 2012 Report to the Nations, on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, surveyed participating members estimate that organizations lose, on average about 5 percent of their revenues to dishonesty, from within.
Key Finding topics included The Impact, Detection, Victims and Perpetrators of Occupation Fraud:
Occupational Fraud is a significant threat to small business.
The smallest Businesses suffered the largest median losses.
Fraud reported lasted a median of 18 months before being detected.
Occupations Fraud is more likely to be detected by a tip than by any other method – the majority of tips reporting fraud coming from employees within the victimized organization.
Perpetrators with higher levels of authority tend to cause much larger losses.
The Majority (77%) of all frauds in study, were committed by individuals working in one of six departments: executive or upper management, sales, accounting, operations, customer service or purchasing.
In large, the fraudster displayed behavioral red flags, including – Excessive Control Issues, Financial Difficulties, Unusually Close – or only – Company relationship customers.
Since the first Report in 1996, the ACFE has released six editions- in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010 and the current version in 2012. Each Report is based on case information provided by surveyed Certified Fraud Examiners (CFEs), 2010 – the first report to included cases from outside the United States.
The ACFE is the reported the world’s largest anti-fraud organization and premier provider of anti-fraud training and education, with more than 60,000 members. ACFE’s mission is in part, to reduce business fraud world-wide. Their recent June 2012 conference in Orlando, Florida, featured speakers Michael Woodford, whistleblower and former Olympus Corp.CEO; Pamela Meyer, CFE, best-selling author of “Liespotting” ;
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