Page 15 - Internal Auditor M.E. - June 2019

TO cOMMenT on the article,
eMail the author at mkjallad@hotmail.com Fraud risk

2- Check for changes 6- Practice caution
Try as much as possible to communicate directly by phone Make sure that you always fully alert and focused on
with the other party to confirm the payment, especially if payments to be transferred, in particular the payments
you have a certain doubt where you are provided with a that the beneficiary is required to be completed with
new banking account number or changed any information urgency or forced circumstances, or may act with you
about the company name or location. aggressively if you ask him/her for more information and
3- Verifying unique requests data. Often the cause of urgency is fear by the second
party of fraud detection. Always take your time and do all
Such as when the other party sends an email asking you the means to avoid making mistakes.
to transfer the amount to a bank account in an outside
country, or any other not familiar requests, in this case , 7- Beware of confidentiality
it is important to directly communicate with the second In the event where the beneficiary requests the payment
party to confirm such requests. to be confidentially processed without disclosing any
4- Double checking email addresses information, you must communicate directly with the
responsible parties in your company to confirm the
The most common fraud method is by fabricating e-mail request and then communicate with the beneficiary
addresses and manipulating them with very simple company itself by telephone for confirmation.
modifications that a person might not notice if he/she
did not give them enough focus and double-checking.
For example, email may be manipulated from ahmed@ Conclusion:
abccompany.com to become ahmed@acbcompany.com Many fraudulent cases of remittances were caused by
as we can see, the change may be so simple that you did negligence of the financial department staff who are
not notice it and you may communicate with the wrong responsible for making the transfers. Simple additional steps
person, resulting in a money transfer to non-eligible should be taken to confirm and validate that the beneficiary’s
entities. address and data were changed by making a simple telephone
call with the other party and communicating with other
5- Forward instead of Reply departments in the company as further proof.
If you receive any email from a second party (clients, The company should also raise awareness of its employees
suppliers, etc.), Forward the message and then use about this type of risk by attending specialized training
the addresses stored in your company’s address list to courses and continuously guiding staff.
make sure you are communicating with the legitimate
beneficiary to avoiding contact with wrong email Muhammed Khalil Jallad an accounting and auditing expert cur-
addresses. rently working in a leading institution in Kuwait

JUNE 2019 INTERNAL AUDITOR - MIDDLE EAST 15