Digging for Disclosure: Tactics for Protecting Your Firm’s Assets from Swindlers, Scammers, and Imposters

12. Dial ‘F’ for Fraud: The Benefits of an Ethics Hotline

Managing your company’s risk is a tricky business. Companies and investors try to protect themselves from the mammoth-sized Madoff fraud on one end of the spectrum to more common smaller-scale frauds, such as vendors/subcontractors with ulterior motives; officers who engage in sexual harassment, theft of intellectual property, or embezzlement; and rogue traders who deceive their superiors and breach company policies. Even if you conduct a background check on every employee who walks through your company’s doors, how do you know you are not susceptible to some form of fraud?

In 2009, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners announced the results of a study that said that corporate ...