”According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, public and private organizations in the United States, on average, lose about seven percent of their annual revenues to fraud” (1). This numbers has continued to grow over the past fifteen years, and with the economic turmoil and increasing fraud, the need to reduce the risk of fraud is now more important than ever.
Before we can review the ways to reduce fraud, we first need to define what it actually is. As defined in our textbook, “Fraud, sometimes referred to as the fraudulent act, is an intentional deception, whether by omission or co-mission, that causes its victim to suffer an economic loss and/or the perpetrator to realize a gain”. There are three major categories of fraud. The first, assets misappropriation, is when one who is entrusted to manage the company’s assets steals from it by ways such as theft or misuse. The second is corruption, which involves the unlawful misuse or influence over a transaction to gain a personal benefit that is through unlawful and unethical means. A few examples of corruption would be bribery, embezzlement or intentional disregarding a conflict of interest. The third is financial statement fraud which involves the intentional misrepresentation of financial or non-financial information to intentionally deceive the financial statement users whom relied on such information to make material decisions. A few examples would be an Organization that was overstating revenues, understating expenses or intentionally omitting necessary disclosures.
In the 1950’s, a man by the name of Donald R. Cressey coined a theory known as the Fraud Triangle in an attempt to explain why people commit fraud and to assist in the attempt to reduce such fraudulent acts. Over half a century later, many still refer to Cressey’s coined theory which is comprised of the three key factors: perceived