Page 539 - ACFE Fraud Reports 2009_2020

Perpetrators

Perpetrator’s Department
Figure 77 shows where fraudsters worked within the victim organizations in our study. The height of each bubble along
the vertical axis represents the percentage of frauds that originated in each department, and the size of the bubble
represents the median loss for those frauds. For example, we see that more frauds came from the accounting depart-
ment (16.6%) than anywhere else and that the median loss in those cases ($197,000) was slightly larger than the typical
scheme. Fraudsters who worked as executives or upper management, conversely, caused much larger losses than
anyone else ($850,000) and accounted for about 11% of all cases.

Overall, a little more than three-fourths (76%) of occupational frauds came from seven key departments: accounting,
operations, sales, executive/upper management, customer service, purchasing, and finance.

Figure 77: Department of Perpetrator—Frequency and Median Loss

18%

16% $105,000
14.9%
$197,000
16.6%
14% $100,000
12.4%
12%
PERCENT OF CASES 10% $234,000 7.7% $100,000 $45,000 10.9%

$150,000
$850,000
8%
9.0%
8.2%
6%

4% $188,000 4.5%
$360,000 2.2% $123,000
$170,000 1.2% $44,000 4.1%
2% 0.9% $76,000 1.2%
1.0%
$80,000 $200,000
2.8%
0.3% 2.1%
0% IT
Accounting
Marketing/Public Relations
Human Resources
Research and Development
Customer Service
Other
Internal Audit* Legal Board of Directors Manufacturing and Production Warehousing/Inventory Finance Purchasing Executive/Upper Management Sales Operations Median Loss
DEPARTMENT OF PERPETRATOR
*Internal Audit category had insufficient responses for median loss calculation.

REPORT TO THE NATIONS ON OCCUPATIONAL FRAUD AND ABUSE 55