Page 456 - ACFE Fraud Reports 2009_2020

Perpetrator’s Tenure
The distribution of fraudsters in our study based on their tenure with the victim organization is shown in Figure
63, and we can see that it has remained consistent with our 2010 and 2012 data. The largest group of fraud per-
petrators (41%) had been employed by their targets between one and five years before committing their crimes.
Less than 7% committed fraud within the first year of employment with the victim. However, fraudsters in the
first-year group were more than three times as likely to have a prior fraud-related conviction (15% of all first-year
fraudsters had prior convictions, as opposed to only 4% of those with at least one year of tenure), and they were
twice as likely to have been previously charged but not convicted of a fraud (14% for first-year fraudsters versus
7% for those with at least one year of tenure). This seems to suggest that first-year fraudsters are more likely to be
“predatory employees” — those who take a job with the intent of defrauding their employer. However, as shown
in Figure 64, this group caused far lower median losses than those who had longer tenure.

Figure 63: Tenure of Perpetrator — Frequency

50%
45.7%
41.5% 40.7%
40%

PERCENT OF CASES 30% 23.2% 27.2% 27.3% 25.4% 25.3% 25.2%

20%

10%
5.7% 5.9% 6.8% 2014
51.9% 6.6% 2.9% 2012
0% 2010
Less than 1 year 1-5 years 6-10 years More than 10 years
TENURE OF PERPETRATOR

52 RepoRt to the NatioNs oN occupatioNal FRaud aNd abuse