Corporate Fraud Handbook, 5th Edition

Preface

As I wrote in my fifth book, Occupational Fraud and Abuse, few people begin their careers with the goal of becoming liars, cheats, and thieves. Yet that turns out to be the destiny of all too many. Corporate fraud and abuse—as we have seen in such headline‐grabbing cases as Enron, WorldCom, Olympus, and Toshiba—costs organizations and investors billions and billions annually. The losses in human terms are incalculable.

Corporate Fraud Handbook: Prevention and Detection is for those whose job it is to reduce these losses: fraud examiners, auditors, investigators, loss prevention specialists, managers and business owners, criminologists, human resources personnel, academicians, and law enforcement professionals, among others.

There are four broad objectives of this work:

1. To detail a classification system to explain the various schemes used by executives, owners, managers, and employees to commit these offenses
2. To quantify the losses from these schemes
3. To illustrate the human factors in fraud
4. To provide guidance in preventing and detecting occupational fraud and abuse

How this book came about is a story in itself. As improbable as it seems looking back, I am well into my fourth decade in the field of fraud detection and deterrence. Like many of you, my career path did not start where it ended up. In the third grade, I distinctly remember pledging to be an astronomer. But by college, quantum physics had proved my undoing. Just a few credits shy of a math/physics degree, ...