While owners and executives commit only 20% of occupational fraud, they cause the biggest losses. The underlying factors behind the crimes, according to Laura Downing, CFE, are greed, pride and entitlement.

An assumption of her Executive Fraud Triangle is that executives have the power and authority (deliberate or not) to act as they want. They usually go unchallenged and remove those who dare to question.

Without the proper internal controls, their fraud could last months or years.

Here are a few signs that one of your executives could be bilking the company:

If any of these activities are taking place in your company, contact us.

Biometrics has become an industry buzzword since it has the capacity to authenticate faster, easier and more securely than traditional passwords, writes Mateusz Chrobok. They tap into physical or behavioral human characteristics that can be used to identify someone.

While physical biometrics refers to physiological features such as a fingerprint or retina scan, behavioral biometrics analyze patterns such as keystroke movements, mouse use, touchscreen behavior and device movements.

"Financial institutions are increasingly adopting software solutions that monitor the ways in which customers type and swipe on their devices or even how they hold their devices when logging into banking apps."

ACFE's 2022 Anti-Fraud Technology Benchmarking Report shows that physical biometrics is the most commonly employed emerging technology that companies are using to fight fraud, with 34% of survey respondents currently using them and 17% anticipating adopting them in the next 1-2 years.

While biometric authentication technologies play a vital role in protecting people, they have limitations, according to Mason Wilder, CFE. For example, the data must be stored somewhere. "The accessibility of leaked biometric data could facilitate its spoofing, or if not securely stored, allow an imposter access to biometrically restricted information."

Wilder suggests that companies may want to combine multiple biometrics and add a human element to decrease a fraudster's chance of success.

IAS can help you identify, deter, investigate and resolve fraud in your company. We can audit your internal controls, create a loss prevention and internal audit program, conduct loss prevention workshops, and most importantly investigate suspected fraud.

Our investigations can obtain signed confessions, restitution and even prosecutions.