Page 490 - ACFE Fraud Reports 2009_2020

Introduction

Organizations face numerous risks to their success; several notable trends in how such fraud is committed,
economic risk, disaster risk, supply-chain risk, regulatory how it is detected, and how organizations combat this
risk, and technology risk all affect organizations in differ- threat. The stated goals of the 2016 report are the same
ent ways and to varying degrees. While fraud risk is just as those of its predecessors:
one of the many entries on this list, it is universally faced
by all business and government entities. Any organiza- • To summarize the opinions of experts on the per-
tion with assets is in danger of those resources being centage of organizational revenue lost to fraud each
targeted by dishonest individuals. And, unfortunately, year
a notable portion of that threat comes from the very
people who have been hired to carry out the organiza- • To categorize the ways in which occupational fraud
tion’s operations. It is this risk—the risk of occupational occurs
fraud —that the first Report to the Nation on Occupation-
1
al Fraud and Abuse was published in 1996 to explore. • To analyze the characteristics of the individuals who
commit occupational fraud
In the twenty years since the inaugural report was re-
leased, our continuing research on these topics has not • To examine the characteristics of the organizations
only come to represent the largest collection of occupa- that are victimized by occupational fraud
tional fraud cases ever analyzed, but has also illuminated
This report contains an analysis of 2,410 cases of occu-
1 Occupational fraud can be defined as “the use of one’s occupation for personal enrichment pational fraud that were investigated between January
through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization’s resources or
assets.” 2014 and October 2015. Figure 1 provides a summary

6 REPORT TO THE NATIONS ON OCCUPATIONAL FRAUD AND ABUSE