商务风险管理指南：如何预防商务欺诈.pdf

13 Pre-Empting Fraud and Theft It was unusual to see a police car at the office, and even more of a surprise to receive two officers into your office. Drunken employees? A traffic offence? That they wanted copies of your courier bills seemed odder still . Later it turned out that the delivery company’s finance person was issuing inflated bills to clients, and then siphoning off the cash. ‘They targeted companies who weren’t scrutinizing their bills,’ says Sergeant Pearce. ‘You’re fortunate,’ he says. ‘Some companies have lost a lot of money.’ ‘Well, we pride ourselves on being on the ball,’ says Jake, in that slightly smug tone of his . ‘The sergeant pauses. ‘I’ve noticed an absence of emergency exit signs, fire extinguishers, and several other health and safety violations here. When I come back next week, it would be in your interests to make sure you’re fully compliant, sir,’ he says . The Scale of the Problem The big fraud cases tend to affect individuals, such as where Bernie Madoff defrauded people of £18 billion and was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Or else they are accounting scandals such as Enron, where a business misleads investors. But there are countless cases of fraud that don’t reach the press, and which can put a company into receivership. In many cases, the fraud goes undetected for several years, and is only discovered when the company runs out of money. In this chapter we examine occupational fraud, that is, fraud carried out by employees, and also consider the threat of fraudulent behaviour from customers and criminals. FRAUD IS SURPRISINGLY COMMON Fraud costs UK businesses £66 billion a year, according to the National Fraud Authority. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners () reckons that companies lose 5 per cent of turnover, which could equate to 10 per cent of profits. Table 13.1 is an estimate of UK losses. Ernst and Young () believe that companies suffer from other unreported ways: • l