Page 616 - ACFE Fraud Reports 2009_2020

Position of Perpetrator FIG. 32 How does gender distribution and median loss vary based on
Based on Gender the perpetrator’s level of authority?
86%
One possible reason that fraud
losses caused by men are larger 73%
than those caused by women
could be related to levels of 58%
authority. As shown in Figure 24
on pg. 33, fraudsters with high 42%
levels of authority (e.g., execu-
tives and owners) tend to cause PERCENT OF C A SES 27%
much larger losses than those
with low authority (e.g., rank- 14%
and-file employees).

Figure 32 shows that the pro-
portion of male fraudsters rises Employee Manager Owner/executive
with the perpetrators’ level of
authority. At the employee level,
only 58% of fraudsters were $50,000 $50,000
male, but that number increased $128,000
to 73% for managers and 86% $165,000
for owners/executives. Given
that there were far more men $295,000
than women in higher levels
of authority in our dataset, we MEDIAN L OSS
would expect the median loss
for males to be larger.

But interestingly, even when
we account for authority
level, males still tend to cause
significantly larger losses than Male Female
females in managerial and $1,000,000
owner/executive roles. Male
owners/executives caused a
median loss of USD 1 million,
as opposed to a median loss
of USD 295,000 caused by
female owners/executives.
Among managers there was
also a gender discrepancy in
median loss, although not nearly
as large. At the employee level,
male and female median losses
were equal.

40 Perpetrators Report to the Nations