In recent years, both public and private sector companies have been globally hit by a spate of frauds perpetrated by employees. According to the 2010 Report to the nations on occupational fraud and abuse by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, an average organisation loses about 5% of its annual revenue to fraud ?globally totalling more than $2.9 trillion in 2009.
An occupational fraud can range from identity thefts and falsified expense reports to Ponzi schemes. But among all these categories, asset misappropriation is the most prevalent, followed by corruption and financial statement fraud. Nearly 90% of all occupational frauds involve some form of asset misappropriation, of which approximately 85% cases involve cash as the means of fraud.
The global median loss was the highest for financial statement frauds ($41,00,000), followed by corruption ($2,50,000) and asset misappropriation ($1,35,000) for 2010.
While financial statement frauds lasted for the longest period with a median duration of 27 months, register disbursement lasted for the least duration of 12 months. The report was based on data compiled from a study of 1,843 cases of occupational frauds that occurred between January 2008 and December 2009 across 106 nations. The US, with 60% cases, was reported as the hub for such frauds, followed by Asia (16.6%) and Europe (8.7%).