Fraud Statistics
The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimate the typical organization loses 5% of revenues in a given year as a result of fraud.
• The total loss caused by the cases in our study exceeded $6.3 billion, with an average loss per case
of $2.7 million.
• The median loss for all cases in our study was $150,000, with 23.2% of cases causing losses of $1 million or more.
• Among the various forms of asset misappropriation, billing schemes and check tampering schemes posed the greatest risk based on their relative frequency and median loss.
• In 94.5% of the cases in our study, the perpetrator took some efforts to conceal the fraud. The most common concealment methods were creating and altering physical documents.
• Approximately two-thirds of the cases reported to us targeted privately held or publicly owned companies. These for-profit organizations suffered the largest median losses among the types of organizations analyzed, at $180,000 and $178,000, respectively.
• The median loss suffered by small organizations (those with fewer than 100 employees) was the same as that incurred by the largest organizations (those with more than 10,000 employees). However, this type of loss is likely to have a much greater impact on smaller organizations.
• Organizations of different sizes tend to have different fraud risks. Corruption was more prevalent in larger organizations, while check tampering, skimming, payroll, and cash larceny schemes were twice as common in small organizations as in larger organizations.
Source: Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, 2016 Global Fraud Study, Pg. 4