The fraud triangle of opportunity, rationalization, and pressure involves asset misappropriation, corruption, and financial fraud reports. These are the three occupational frauds that company chief executives and employees commit.
Introduction:
In today’s information world, monitoring and securing confidential data in companies has become a trending issue as most of the fraudsters are covert which makes them difficult to identify. Occupational fraud refers to stealing a company’s assets such as money laundering, employee violations of the code of conduct, and theft. Most of the fraud occurs through fraudster vested interests. Company executives or staff commit fraud based on the fraud triangle which is opportunity, rationalization, and pressure. Based on these three aspects fraudsters tend to commit these crimes both internally and externally of the company. According to the survey conducted by ACFE, it is said that small organizations are losing 5% of their total revenues each year. In that survey, the highest occurrence of fraud was committed with misappropriation of assets with around 85%. Financial statements fraud fell to 9%, and corruption is 37%. Even though financial statement fraud was low in the survey, its costs are huge with a loss of 1 million dollars (ACFE.com). Frauds occur not only on the inside of an organization but also from outside the company. In a recent study, organizations face high pressure to protect their assets from hackers like those that broke
Cash is such an important current asset to a business, especially for the every day running of it, so ready access to cash is crucial. Therefore, every company must utilize safeguards to protect and manage their cash. An alarming statistic in one of The National Restaurant Association’s (NRA) reports shows that employee theft cost $8.5B to its members in 2007 – the equivalent of 4% of food sales. Furthermore, only 10% of employees do not commit fraud in any situation, while 5% do commit fraud, and the other 85% will actually consider
Appendix A.2 also lists several factors that could provide opportunities for management/employees to commit fraud. One factor that could lead to fraud is if, “There is ineffective monitoring of management as a result of: domination of management by a single person or small group without compensating controls.” The auditors should have taken notice of the lack of controls and segregation of duties with respect to Phar-Mor’s
1. The three aspects of fraud - Perceived pressure, Rationalization, and Opportunity were present in the CIT case as follows:
Fraud is an issue that causes major scandals, although it is a very ancient scheme. Recent fraud events gave light to gaps that facilitated its events. Its extent was drastic by affecting financial markets that eventually trickled into global markets. Major organizations and countries worked cohesively and continue to address the gaps and, in effect, implemented strict compliance regulations to diminish and refrain fraudulent activities. Strict compliance regulations are examples of a fraud response plan the small family business could have implemented to refrain the perpetrators from fraudulent incidents, protect organizational assets and the organization’s going concern.
The use of information technology in business presents major security challenges, poses serious ethical question, and affects society in significant ways. Especially, the computer crime is a growing threat to society and is caused by the criminal or irresponsible actions of individuals who are taking advantage of the widespread use and vulnerability of computers and the Internet and other networks. It presents a major challenge to the integrity, safety, and survival of most business systems.
Modern organizations that utilize technology must now use their resources to protect themselves from malicious cybercrime activities. A “hacker” could illegally intrude into an organizations information network and use accounting software to mine information and steal assets at a relatively low risk of being caught.
Some industry-specific factors, such as having valuable near-cash assets, can increase the organization's vulnerability. Also they will need to rationalize the actions as justifiable. The individuals committing the fraud must first convince themselves that their behavior is acceptable or will be temporary. For example, Barry Minkow’s believed that the lies and deceit are for the betterment of his company and that with time everything will eventually return to normal.
Every fraud scheme involves opportunities as it becomes the means for the perpetrators to commit the crime. Perpetrators actively pursue opportunities such as analyzing the circumstances that enable the fraud to be committed without getting caught. Pressures to commit fraud are based on various individual factors; for example, debt, status quo, or greed. The rationalization of the crimes are as demoralizing as the crimes, which relate to the pressure the perpetrator is conduced to in committing the crime. Tax fraud, divorce and bankruptcy fraud can all highly relate to the triangle fraud’s underlying factors in providing the source of the crimes that are presented in judicial court systems despite the notorious organizations or ex-love past
Whether the dishonest act involves fraud against a company, such as employee embezzlement, or fraud on behalf of a company, such as management fraud, the three elements are always present. Figure 1 illustrates the fraud triangle comprised of these three elements.
Fraud is defined as a deliberate misrepresentation that causes a person or business to suffer damages, often in the form of monetary losses through deception or concealment. And Occupational Fraud as defined by the ACFE is the use of one’s occupation for personal enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization’s resources or assets. Traditional fraud triangle theory by Donald Cressey explains that propensity of fraud occurring in an organization lies on three critical elements which are Pressure, Opportunity, and Rationalization.
There are various forms of cash fraud. One of the common schemes is cash larceny. Cash larceny refers to employees intentionally taking away cash from their employer without the employer’s knowledge and consent (Wells, 2014). Employees who have direct access to cash are more likely to commit cash larceny (Wells, 2014). Cash larceny is more likely to occur if there are weak internal controls in an organization. Weak internal controls make it difficult to prevent and detect an occurrence of fraud. This paper seeks to evaluate a recent case of cash larceny by a former employee at Glen Aubrey Fire Company.
A business can not work out without an account system, which includes internal. Internal controls are used by companies to make sure financial information is accurate and valid. Strong internal controls are signs of a financially healthy company and protect the company’s integrity. Strong internal controls can also increase a company’s profitability. There are several types of internal controls that companies used to protect themselves such as: Segregation of duties, asset purchases, supervisor review, internal audits and adequate documents and records. This paper will discuss several topics from a case study about And the Fraud
Essentially, all three elements of the fraud triangle must be present for fraud to be committed: pressure, opportunity, and rationalization. Additionally, nine factors provided the atmosphere for the perfect fraud storm of 2000 through 2002. The nine factors included: economy, moral values, incentives, expectations, debt, accounting rules, auditor dependence, greed, and educator failures (Albrecht et al., 2012). When combined with the elements of the fraud triangle these factors enabled organizations such as Enron and WorldCom to commit the fraudulent activities that resulted in this perfect storm.
According to the Certified Fraud Examiners’ 2012 Report to the Nations, organizations typically lose five percent of revenues to fraud annually (Laxman, Randles, & Nair, 2014). Fraud impacts more than just a bottom line; it can cause significant damage to a firm’s reputation, seriously hurt investors, and degrade morale and opportunities for employees. As evidenced by recent highly publicized cases, internal controls are an important function of business and government and are necessary in reducing the negative impact of fraud in our economy (Brucker & Rebele, 2010).
Almost all kind of large and small organizations might face increasing number of attacks into their network or intellectual property. This may lead to data disclosure, data destruction, and damage of organization’s reputation. There are numerous threats in the cyber space which might be capable of stealing, destroying or making use of out sensitive data for financial and non-financial gains. As the amount of computer, mobile and internet users increases, so does the number of exploiters.