Webinar On Expense Reimbursement Fraud: Detection, Prevention and Deterrence

Overview:

Expense reimbursement fraud-encompassing the myriad forms of employee travel and entertainment (T&E) schemes as well as Purchasing Card (P-Card) fraud-cost organizations hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars per year.

According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), expense reimbursement frauds result in a median loss of $26,000 per incident and represent 14.5% of all employee fraud. While many of these schemes are considered "immaterial"-such as claiming reimbursement for a personal meal ... charging a pay-per-view movie to a business-related hotel bill ... or inflating the cost of a taxi ride-management should not underestimate the cumulative cost of these thefts. 

This webinar will summarize the main types of reimbursement fraud to be alert to, including several "real life" case studies. It will then explain how to identify the red flags of possible reimbursement fraud, offer specific fraud-audit techniques and test for these crimes and conclude with a rundown of proven anti-fraud controls. 

Why should you attend: In one case alone, a senior executive of a major multinational company stole $500,000 by abusing his expense account privileges. While this may not be typical of expense reimbursement fraud, it does illustrate how employees who have the opportunity to exploit weaknesses in your organization's expense reimbursement processes and procedures can do so.

Moreover, anti-fraud experts agree that expense reimbursement fraud can be among the most difficult types of employee crime to detect and prevent. That is in large part due to the extraordinary variety of ways in which such crimes can be committed.

By attending this Webinar, you will learn how vulnerable your organization is to expense reimbursement fraud. You'll learn about the common and not-so-common ways that these frauds are perpetrated and-most importantly-you'll learn how to detect the red flags of these schemes, how to audit for them and how to tighten up your controls against them.

Participants will be able to:

• Understand the many types of travel, entertainment and internal procurement frauds
• Implement effective expense reimbursement fraud detection techniques and build audit practices to detect red flags of these crimes
• Implement best-practice Anti-Fraud Control strategies for expense reimbursement fraud

Areas Covered in the Session:

Introduction

• • Statistical overview of the fraud problem generally, and T&E fraud specifically
  • Who commits fraud
  • Why employees commit fraud (The Fraud Triangle)
  • Lessons from T&E fraudsters

Common Types of Expense Reimbursement Fraud Today

• Falsifying T&E reimbursement schemes w/ bogus receipts
• Submitting T&E claims multiple times
• Abuse of corporate/P-card for personal gain
• Claiming for expenses just under the limit requiring approval
• Purchasing more than needed (e.g. office supplies)
• Exploiting AP/Disbursements control weaknesses
• P-Card fraud

Red Flags of AP Fraud

• Specific red flags of each of the common expense reimbursement frauds
• The Fraud Risk Mitigation Cycle
• Implementing an organization-wide system for detecting, preventing and investigating fraud

Fraud Detection

• How T&E Frauds Are Most Often Detected
• Additional General Detection Methods
• Data Mining/Analytics for fraud detection
• Examples of Fraud Audit Techniques at Work 

Anti-Fraud Controls for Expense Reimbursement Fraud

• Internal Controls and Other T&E Fraud Prevention Measures
• Who Should Manage Anti-Fraud Activities
• Internal Controls: Do's and Don'ts
• General controls: Segregation of Duties, Delegation of Authority, Background Investigation
• Specific Expense reimbursement controls and deterrents

Who Will Benefit:

• Internal and External Audit Professionals
• Accounting and Audit Practitioners
• HR Managers
• Senior Financial Management seeking to reduce their Vulnerability to Costly Frauds
• Payables Specialists
• Procurement Managers
• Compliance and Ethics Managers
• CFO's/senior Financial Managers
• Security Personnel

Instructor:

Peter Goldmann is founder and President of White-Collar Crime 101 LLC, the parent company of FraudAware and publisher of the monthly newsletter, White-Collar Crime Fighter. Peter has been the Publisher and Editor of White-Collar Crime Fighter for over 12 years and is recognized as a leading expert in the areas of fraud detection, prevention, investigation and training. He has written numerous articles on practical approaches to fraud prevention and detection for, among others, Internal Auditor, Investor's Business Daily, Financial Executives Institute and Bottom Line/Personal, Recognizing the vulnerability to fraud posed by a lack of awareness on the part of rank-and-file employees about specific types of economic crime , Peter launched the development of FraudAware in 2001. Following enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, FraudAware began helping companies resolve the unexpected increase in fraud losses, despite the costly implementation of SOX- mandated internal controls. He determined that while internal controls, Tone at the Top and whistleblower hotlines are all essential components of an effective anti-fraud program, the primary reason for continuing losses to internal and external economic criminals was a widespread lack of fraud awareness on the part of corporate rank-and-file employees. He theorized that if an organization's most valuable asset--its workforce--could be taught to spot and report telltale signs of fraud, investigations could be initiated and perpetrators apprehended before major losses were incurred and negative publicity tarnished the organization's reputation. The theory has proved viable over the past six years, as FraudAware training programs implemented at numerous companies in all major industries, have taught employees how to detect the common and not-so-common red flags of fraud and--most importantly--how to report these incidents through their employer's confidential hotline channels.