Employee Expense Reimbursement Fraud: Schemes and Controls

This 90-minute webinar will summarize the main types of reimbursement fraud to be alert to, and include an analysis of several “real life” case studies. It will 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.

By attending this webinar, 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.
   

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 Dont's.
• General controls: Segregation of Duties, Delegation of Authority, Background Investigation.
• Specific Expense reimbursement controls and deterrents.
   

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.

• 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/Fraud Investigators and Examiners
   

Peter Goldmann is president of FraudAware LLC, the publisher of White-Collar Crime Fighter, a widely read monthly newsletter for internal auditors, controllers, corporate counsel, financial operations managers and fraud investigators. The newsletter is in its 15th year of publication under Peter's leadership. Peter is the author of “Fraud in the Markets: Why it Happens and How to Fight It”, published by John Wiley & Sons, as well as four other anti-fraud books. Peter also developed FraudAware, the leading employee fraud awareness training program. A user-friendly learning tool, FraudAware uses workshop, Webinar and E-Learning formats to educate employees and managers at all levels in how to detect, prevent and report incidents of fraud or suspicious conduct. In addition, Peter has conducted numerous on-site fraud detection and prevention workshops for internal auditors, attorneys, HR executives and compliance officers at Fortune 500 companies and large not-for profit organizations. He has also been a guest lecturer for college accounting and auditing courses. Peter has 30 years of experience as a business journalist and trainer, having launched, edited and published numerous business trade periodicals covering small business, international trade, management strategy, banking and personal finance. He is a Certified Fraud Examiner. Peter holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and a Master's from the London School of Economics (CFE).