Page 46 - ACFE Fraud Reports 2009_2020

T H E E F F E C T O F C O L L U S I O N

As noted above, the cost of occupational fraud tends to rise when multiple parties act in collusion. The following chart shows
the median cost of fraud based on the number of perpetrators, regardless of position . While it was much more common for
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a fraud to be committed by a single perpetrator (68% of cases), the median loss in schemes with multiple perpetrators was
$450,000, which was almost seven times higher than the losses caused by perpetrators who acted alone.

L O S S B Y N U M B E R O F P E R P E T R A T O R S

NUMBER OF
PERPETRATORS
Two or More (32.4%) $450,000

One (67.6%) $67,000

MEDIAN LOSS

C R I M I N A L H I S T O R Y O F P E R P E T R A T O R S

The following chart shows that only about seven percent of occupational fraud perpetrators were known to have been convict-
ed for a previous crime, and only another three percent were known to have been previously charged for a fraud-related
offense. This is consistent with other studies that have shown most people who commit fraud are first-time offenders.

C R I M I N A L H I S T O R Y O F P E R P E T R A T O R

CONVICTION STATUS/
PERCENT OF CASES

Never Charged or Convicted (68.8%) 397

Don’t Know (21.3%) 123
Had Prior Convictions (6.9%) 40

Charged but Not Convicted (2.9%) 17

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 500
NUMBER OF CASES

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Whereas in the chart on page 14 we were only looking at collusion between managers and employees, in this chart we are viewing the effects of collusion between any two parties. This not only includes
purely internal collusion, but also schemes in which an employee or manager conspires with an outsider such as a vendor or a customer.

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