Fraud. No business owner wants to think that it could happen to them. After all, you trust your employees. You have internal controls in place. That’s enough to prevent it from happening to you, right? Many others thought the same thing, yet according to the 2016 ACFE Report to the Nations, the typical organization loses 5% of its revenues in a given year as a result of fraud. This report also tells us that the median loss per case is $150,000, which can be detrimental to a small business. In total, the cases in the ACFE study exceeded $6.3 billion in total losses, with 23% of those cases suffering losses of $1 million or more.

It’s important to understand where your organization is vulnerable: is it pocketing the cash and not recording it on the general ledger? Is it accepting bribes from vendors or getting kickbacks from an invoice? Is it financial statement fraud, where fictitious revenues are recorded and assets are undervalued? How about check tampering? Or, is it a payroll scheme, where a ghost employee’s salary is being routed to the fraudster and no one is aware they’re even on the payroll?

It’s important to understand that any organization can be vulnerable to fraud. If you want to ensure your organization’s controls are secure and weakness is low, please contact the Fraud & Forensics Team at Somerset at .