Fighting Fraud in Your Organization

By Lowers & Associates,

This week, we were proud to support the ACFE’s International Fraud Awareness Week — a global effort to minimize the impact of fraud by promoting anti-fraud awareness and education. As we wrap up our Fraud Awareness Week series, Fraud Stories and Lessons Learned, it is a pleasure to end the week with a message from Jon Groussman, President of Lowers & Associates (L&A). In this video, Jon discusses why fraud happens and how L&A works with organizations to detect, investigate, and prevent it.

Watch the video here:

In its 2020 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) conducted the 11th edition of its largest global study on occupational fraud. The report examines how fraud schemes including corruption, asset misappropriation, and financial statement fraud are committed and how they are detected. It also looks at the profile of both victim organizations and perpetrators.

Some notable findings from the ACFE Report include:

  • Organizations lose an estimated 5% of revenue each year to fraud.
  • 21% of cases caused losses of $1 million or more.
  • Asset misappropriation is the most common category of fraud experienced by organizations.
  • The median duration of a fraud is 14 months.
  • Financial statement fraud has the greatest velocity (median loss per month) at $39,800 per month.
  • Most commonly, fraudsters conceal their crimes by creating or altering physical or digital documents or files.
  • Tips by employees, customers, anonymous sources, and others are the most common way fraud is initially detected.
  • 70% of fraud occurred in for-profit organizations.
  • Small businesses (those with fewer than 100 employees) had the highest median loss of $150,000.
  • Billing schemes occurred at almost twice the rate in small businesses compared to larger organizations. Check and payment tampering was nearly four times more common at small companies.
  • Corruption and noncash schemes occurred more frequently in larger organizations.
  • Only approximately half of the victim organizations in the ACFE study undertook background checks on their employees.
  • The longer a perpetrator works for a company, the more damage that person’s fraud scheme causes.
  • Manager-level perpetrators are more likely to override existing controls.
  • 85% of all fraudsters displayed at least one behavioral red flag while committing their crimes.
  • Most organizations (54%) in the ACFE study did not recover any of their losses.

Adding perspective from fellow Lowers Risk Group company, Lowers Forensics International, Henry Dicker has this to say about fighting fraud: “One thing is constant: Accounting fraud is always a surprise. Our clients say, ‘We never saw it happening.’ Solid internal controls, implemented and followed diligently, are the best deterrent to fraud. Additionally, continually maintaining and testing your internal controls, performing internal audits of high-risk areas, and monitoring non-financial measures is crucial. Forensic Accountants are a valuable resource to have on your side to help safeguard your data and investigate losses when fraud strikes.”

To discuss your fraud prevention program with an expert, we invite you to reach out to Lowers & Associates here.

Fraud Week 2020: Lessons Learned from Real Life Stories of Fraud

By Lowers & Associates,

COFFEE BREAK SERIES: FRAUD WEEK 2020 Lessons Learned from Real-Life Stories of Fraud Neil Watson Director, Global Operations, Lowers & Associates

Think it’s too good to be true? (You’re probably right.)

This week, we have been proud to recognize and support the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ 2020 Fraud Week initiative with our special Coffee Break Series. Fraud Week is an annual movement organized by the ACFE to champion the need to proactively fight fraud and help safeguard businesses and investments from the growing fraud problem. We have shared a number of stories and lessons through the eyes of Certified Fraud Examiners and other fraud experts on our team, examining issues such as fraud detection, whistleblower programs, situational awareness, and cyberfraud.

For our final episode, we interviewed Neil Watson, Director, Global Operations for Lowers & Associates. Neil has more than 30 years’ experience in the insurance industry which includes over 20 years working within the Fine Art, Jewellery and Specie (FAJS) sector. It is through this lens that Neil shares three stories of FAJS insurance-related fraud and key lessons that can be applied to any industry:

1. Nickel Wire: Worth How Much?

In this story, Neil encounters nickel wire that was reportedly worth $300/meter and the owner was seeking to insure 6 million meters worth. If nickel wire was worth that much, wouldn’t we all be invested in it? Neil shares how some quick research revealed the ludicrousness of this attempted fraud.

2. Rubies: Really?

Neil has some great stories to tell about ruby gemstones. The usual quarterly sale of all rubies sold around the world is in the neighborhood of $40-$50 million. The highest value single ruby ever sold was $30 million. Here, he shares what it’s like to receive a fantastic photo of a stone someone is wanting to insure that is reportedly worth $250 million. Really?

3. Platinum Concentrate: Unearthing the Truth.

Neil tells the story of the great effort a group of fraudsters went through to present a compelling story of $5 billion worth of platinum concentrate they wanted to insure. The Lowers team went so far as to visit the facility only to unearth the truth of the matter.

Grab a cup of coffee and spend 8 minutes with Neil to hear three stories that will make you believe when something feels too good to be true, it probably is.

 

 

We hope you enjoyed this week’s special Fraud Week Coffee Break Series. You can access the full roundup of episodes here. At Lowers Risk Group, we’re intent on helping organizations protect their people, brands, and profits from avoidable loss and harm. If you think we can be of assistance to you, request a meeting and let’s get to work.

 

  Category: Fraud Week
  Comments: Comments Off on Fraud Week 2020: Lessons Learned from Real Life Stories of Fraud

Fraud Week 2020: Cyberfraud and COVID-19

By Lowers & Associates,

Fraud Week 2020: Cyberfraud and COVID-19

Think You’re Not at Risk? Think Again.

Our special 5-part Fraud Week Coffee Break Series continues today where we invite you to spend 10 minutes each day learning about various aspects of fraud detection and prevention through the eyes of our Certified Fraud Examiners and other fraud experts.

For this episode, we interviewed Steven Schwartz, Chief Revenue Officer for Periculus and a recognized innovation leader in the fields of risk management and cybersecurity. Periculus is a digital risk company specializing in helping small businesses measure, understand, and protect against digital risks so they can pursue growth. Before launching Periculus, Schwartz led strategy and insurance at Cytegic, one of the industry’s leading cyber risk quantification platforms, playing a vital role in the company’s successful acquisition by MasterCard in June 2020.

In its September 2020 Fraud in the Wake of COVID-19 Benchmarking Report, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) reported, “Cyberfraud (e.g., business email compromise, hacking, ransomware, and malware) continues to be the most heightened risk for organizations, with 83% of respondents already observing an increase in these schemes and 90% anticipating a further increase over the next year.”

Many experts believe that organizations were simply unprepared from a cyber perspective for the pandemic and its resulting shift to a remote work environment where employees are now operating outside the usual infrastructure and oversight of their organizations.

As Schwartz explains, “We’re in an interesting time right now, where we’ve never been so polarized, yet so connected. With the increase in digital connectivity comes an exponential increase in the vulnerabilities and threats. The doors are open for attackers to exploit.”

Grab a cup of coffee and spend 7 minutes listening to Schwartz’s view on cyberfraud during COVID-19 and how organizations can better protect themselves moving forward.

How Can Organizations Better Protect Against Cyberfraud?

As with any type of risk an organization faces, it starts with an assessment to develop a true understanding of the risks you face and how those risks might impact your organization. From that place of understanding, you can make decisions about how to effectively mitigate or transfer those risks.

Schwartz explains it this way: “If you just tell me my risk is a 3 out of 5 and that’s all you tell me, I have no idea what that means to my business. But if you tell me I’m a 3 out of 5 with a financial impact of 2 million dollars, it becomes contextualized. And if we take that a step further and we’re able to demonstrate the controls you should invest in because they’re going to have the greatest impact in reducing your risk and financial impact and this is how much you should consider transferring via insurance, we can start to make sense of it all.”

We hope you enjoyed this Coffee Break episode. Come back tomorrow to hear from Neil Watson and lessons learned from real-life stories of fraud.

Fraud Week 2020: Got Situational Awareness?

By Lowers & Associates,

Fraud Week 2020: Got Situational Awareness?

Looking at the Fraud Triangle During COVID-19

Today, we continue our special 5-part Fraud Week Coffee Break Series with another episode to address important fraud prevention topics with insight from our Certified Fraud Examiners and subject matter experts. Fraud Week is an annual movement, organized by the Association for Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), to champion the need to proactively fight fraud and help safeguard businesses and investments from the growing fraud problem.

For this episode, we interviewed Carlos Rivera, CFE, MAFF, Senior Vice President – Caribbean & Latin America of Lowers Forensics International and Grant Mizel, Financial Analyst, Emerging Markets for Lowers Risk Group. Rivera and Mizel offer their insight to help us understand the importance of situational awareness to an organization’s ability to detect and prevent fraud. They point to the Fraud Triangle as a model for understanding why fraud happens, but also recognize that without situational awareness, the Fraud Triangle is meaningless.

Grab a cup of coffee and spend 7 minutes with Rivera and Mizel:

Formulated in 1953 by criminologist Donald Cressey, the Fraud Triangle theorizes that fraud occurs when a perpetrator feels financial pressure, they are presented an opportunity, and/or they can rationalize the theft. For the Fraud Triangle to be valuable, organizations must be situationally aware. What’s going on in, around, and outside your organization? Which of these internal or external factors might be impacting the opportunities, rationalizations, and incentives that can lead people to commit fraud?

As Rivera points out, “Removing separation of duties and internal audit departments certainly creates the opportunity for employees to commit fraud. However, you have to consider the financial pressure and rationalization that goes along with a national catastrophic situation. In many instances, you’ll have employees who receive salary cuts that may not only feel financial pressure but also rationalize it by claiming what they believe is rightfully theirs, or you may see an employee rationalize through necessity which I believe can be just as powerful of a motivator.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has, unfortunately, led to situations where people have less supervision, more opportunity, and way more financial pressure than before.

As a result, in its September 2020 Fraud in the Wake of COVID-19 Benchmarking Report, the ACFE reported, “77% of respondents said they had observed an increase in the overall level of fraud, with one-third noting that this increase has been significant.” Furthermore, the ACFE reports, “Our findings indicate this uptick is likely to continue; 92% of respondents expect to see a further increase in the overall level of fraud during the next year, and nearly half expect that increase to be significant.”

Mizel remarks, “You talk about the Fraud Triangle and opportunity, when you give folks the opportunity, they are most likely going to take advantage. You can head that off by putting structures in place, rigor, documentation, automated processes… when you think about the employee, it’s not strange from a fraud examiner’s perspective that someone without oversight would take advantage of the situation.”

We hope you enjoyed this Coffee Break episode. Come back tomorrow to hear from Steven Schwartz, Chief Revenue Officer of Periculus, about cyberfraud during COVID-19.

  Category: COVID-19, Fraud Week
  Comments: Comments Off on Fraud Week 2020: Got Situational Awareness?

Fraud Week 2020: Fraud Runs Amok

By Lowers & Associates,

Fraud Runs Amok: Where Are the Whistleblowers and Auditors Today? Sergio P. Negreira, CPA, CFF, JD EVP, Latin America & Global Forensics Services Lowers Forensics International

Where Are the Whistleblowers and Auditors?

Today, we continue our special 5-part Fraud Week Coffee Break Series where we invite you to spend time each day learning about various aspects of fraud detection and prevention through the eyes of our Certified Fraud Examiners and other fraud experts.

Fraud Week is an annual movement, organized by the Association for Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), to champion the need to proactively fight fraud and help safeguard businesses and investments from the growing fraud problem.

In its 2020 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud, the ACFE looked at how fraud is detected. As it turns out, 43% of occupational fraud is detected by tips. The next most common way is 15% by internal audit. These statistics underscore the vital role of whistleblowers and the need for organizations to provide programs that enable employees and others to be able to safely report suspicious activity.

 

Fraud Detection

Whether by whistleblowers or other methods, fraud detection is a concept organizations need to understand in order to limit the losses they suffer at the hands of fraud. The faster organizations can detect fraud, the smaller the size of the loss. According to the ACFE, “It is also key to fraud prevention because organizations can take steps to improve how they detect fraud, which in turn increases the staff’s perception that fraud will be detected and might help deter future misconduct.”

As mentioned, by a large margin, tips from whistleblowers are the most common way occupational frauds are uncovered. This fact underscores the importance of cultivating and thoroughly evaluating tips that come in through your whistleblower program.

Here’s what the data reveals about fraud detection methods:

How is occupational fraud initially detected?
Source: ACFE 2020 Report to the Nations

 

How COVID-19 is Impacting Whistleblowers and Auditors

Preventing, detecting, and investigating fraud is more difficult during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, according to the ACFE’s COVID-19 Benchmarking Report, “An inability to travel is still the most significant challenge in combating fraud right now, but more people are citing conducting remote interviews as a current top challenge.”

In COVID, since a lot of people are still working remotely, a lot of employees can’t observe other employees’ habits and what they’re doing. And in general, investigating during COVID is very difficult because companies aren’t open and travel is more difficult.

Despite the challenges, organizations are wise to continue to support whistleblower programs and maintain their focus on fraud detection and investigations during the pandemic where the pressure, opportunity, and incentive for fraud is very high.

We hope you enjoyed this Coffee Break article. Come back tomorrow to hear from Carlos Rivera, CFE, MAFF, Senior Vice President – Caribbean & Latin America of Lowers Forensics International and Grant Mizel, Financial Analyst, Emerging Markets of Lowers Risk Group. Rivera and Mizel will speak about situational awareness and the Fraud Triangle during COVID-19.