Fraud 101
The best and most widely accepted model for explaining why people commit fraud is the fraud triangle. This is a model developed by Dr. Donald Cressey, a criminologist whose research focused on embezzlers—people he called “trust violators. According to Cressy, there are three factors that must be present at the same time in order an ordinary person to commit fraud: pressure, opportunity and rationalisation. Recently, a fourth criteria has been added that considers the concept of “capacity, meaning the ability to commit the fraud, without which it could not happen.
https://www.acfe.com/report-to-the-nations/2018/
Who Commits Fraud?
In recent years, KPMG has carried out a series of surveys and fraudsters and has published its results online. The discovered that the typical profile of a fraudster include the follow traits:
- between the ages of 36 and 55 (69 percent of fraudsters investigated)
- predominantly male (79 percent), with the proportion of women on the rise at 17 percent, up from 13 percent in 2010
- a threat from within (65 percent are employed by the company)
- holds an executive or director level position (35 percent)
- employed in the organization for at least six years (38 percent)
- described as autocratic (18 percent) and are three times as likely to be regarded as friendly as not
- esteemed, describing themselves as well-respected in their organization
- likely to have colluded with others (62 percent of frauds, down just slightly from 70 percent in the 2013 survey)
- motivated by personal gain (60 percent), greed (36 percent) and the sense of ‘because I can’ (27 percent).
Further insights can be accessed at the following link: https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/insights/2016/05/profiles-of-the-fraudster.html