Considerable attention is paid to determining the cost of fraud. Executives want to know how significant the risk is to their organizations, anti-fraud professionals want to justify budgets and demonstrate the value of fraud prevention and detection efforts, and the media and general public are curious about just how much money white-collar criminals are taking us for.
Unfortunately, the nature of fraud means that much of its costs are hidden. Many fraud schemes are never detected, or last years before they’re caught, which means at any given time an organization might be losing money to fraud yet be completely unaware of the losses. In addition, even when fraud schemes are caught many of them are never reported or measured. And, of course, most frauds carry substantial indirect costs such as lost productivity, reputational harm, loss of business, and expenses associated with the investigation and attempted recovery of stolen assets.
Although it may be impossible to determine the precise cost of occupational fraud, it is critical for us to try to understand as much as we can about the financial harm caused by these crimes.
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