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Identifying fraud symptoms in financial statements requires observation and recognition. If you don’t look, you’re unlikely to find it. Worse yet, if you do look, are you sure you will recognize the symptoms of fraud?
Fraud, unlike acts of terror, murder, or bank robbery, is rarely observed. Instead, only symptoms or indicators, most often exhibited through changes in the financial statements, are present.
Like a magician’s sleight of hand, the barrage of headline news related to hackers and cyber criminals may divert attention away from the equally dangerous, but perhaps less obvious, threat to your corporate assets: employees. While trusted employees are moving, sharing, and exposing corporate data just to do their jobs, the malicious employee may be deliberately taking confidential information for personal gain or other nefarious reasons.
Larger organizations are more likely to experience fraud by an employee’s misuse of influence in a business transaction in order to gain a direct or indirect benefit. Small organizations, however, typically fall victim to the rogue employee who directly steals the organization’s assets or misuses its resources.
Increasingly, the answers to the most fundamental litigation questions – the “who, what, where, when, and why” – are contained in electronically stored information (ESI), which can be retrieved through electronic discovery (e-discovery) and/or computer forensics.
In our case study, gas station owner, Morris, has alleged that Green Fuel, a small gasoline distributor, overcharged him. Both parties had inadequate and unsophisticated documentation, making determining losses very difficult.
You might not think that a small business would have useful or accessible electronically stored information (ESI). Consider this example of identifying and obtaining relevant forensic evidence to determine lost profit damages with this particular small business.
Think twice before you assume that an unsophisticated small business cannot possibly have any useful or accessible electronically stored information (ESI).
Regardless of the time of year, employees will always have reasons to come and go in the office. Vacations, conferences and meetings are a regular part of most employees' daily schedules. So rather than worrying about the empty chair they leave behind, take advantage...
As we discussed in last week’s blog post, there can be more fraud during the holiday season for a variety of reasons. A few quick steps you can take to reduce your vulnerability to fraud include: Be present – The perception of detection is often one of the strongest...
Fraud happens all the time, but the holiday season provides situations that people may try to take advantage of. The “fraud triangle” has three points to it: Need or Greed Opportunity Rationalization During the holidays, we often see changes in two of these points:...
