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Reports on measures taken by the Benefits Agency to fight benefit fraud during 1993‐94. Categorizes fraud activity and reports on recent investigations. Describes the organization and specifies three ways of dealing with fraud: prevention, detection and deterrence. Outlines current and future plans.

To examine whether planning‐stage fraud risk assessments and audit experience affect the level of professional skepticism displayed by auditors during fieldwork.

The paper presents an experiment using professional auditors.

Overall, auditors predisposed to low fraud risk assessments were less skeptical than those with no knowledge of fraud risk (control group). Also, as expected, auditors in the control group were less skeptical than those predisposed to moderate/high fraud risk assessments. Staff auditors were more skeptical than seniors. Senior auditors showed no differences in skepticism between the control group and high fraud risk assessment group.

Professional skepticism in this study is measured as the auditors’ assessment of client truthfulness. There is reasonable disagreement on the exact meaning of professional skepticism and some readers’ interpretation of the term may be different from the authors' own.

The results suggest a need for audit firms to use ongoing training with regard to professional skepticism and the requirements of SAS No. 99, especially since skepticism appears to decline with increasing audit experience.

The study contributes to auditing literature in the areas of professional skepticism and fraud risk assessment. The overall experience result supports previous studies, but additional insight is gained as to differences in the experience/skepticism relationship at different levels of planning‐stage fraud risk.

Reports on a questionnaire survey of US local government auditors conducted to determine the amount of fraud in state and local governments. Concludes that fraud is a significant problem for state and local governments and finds that management is not responding effectively to “red flags” or to the actual frauds when they are discovered; most of the loss in fraud cases is accounted for by misappropriation of funds, other false representation, other fraud, or false invoices. The most effective fraud detection methods include: internal audit review; specific investigation by management; employee notification; internal controls; and accidental discovery. Finds that most of the legal departments of the government entities studied did not have policies and procedures for dealing with employees suspected of fraud.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the characteristics of perpetrators of occupational fraud and their effects on organizations.

The study is based on a 2006 occupational fraud web survey conducted in Canada by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) using a multivariate regression analysis to explain the effect of perpetrators' characteristics on fraud losses.

The authors' analyses show that the perpetrator's position (i.e. employee, manager, executive/owner), gender, education level and the presence of accomplices (i.e. collusion) appear to affect fraud losses when analyzed separately. However, only the perpetrator's position and collusion are statistically significant when controlling for the potential correlation among explanatory factors.

This study contributes to academia and the anti‐fraud profession by measuring the statistical effect of perpetrators' characteristics on fraud losses while controlling for the potential correlation among these characteristics.

This study is useful to regulatory agencies and anti‐fraud professionals because it provides information about the characteristics of perpetrators of occupational fraud, who are more likely to be associated with larger frauds, thus pinpointing where prevention and detection efforts may be most effective.

This paper is based on proprietary data owned by the ACFE and is the first to analyze the statistical significance of the characteristics of perpetrators of occupational fraud in Canada.

This paper aims to discuss the prevention of complacency regarding payment card fraud, particularly the debit card.

Based on research already carried out on payment card fraud in France, Spain and the UK, the paper extends the analysis of fraud to the payment with respect to cards in use in Australia.

It was found that payment card fraud, particularly on MasterCard and Visa branded debit cards, is often hidden amongst the statistics for overall payment card fraud and yet, with the enhanced functionality of such cards, re: online and international transactions, added to the increasing sophistication of the card fraudsters, there is a present and ever increasing risk of debit card fraud.

Whilst payment card fraud is often dealt with under credit cards, there has been no prior work on debit card fraud.

This paper aims to analyse the status of the bank’s knowledge and the hardship related to the clear evidence requirement with regard to establish the fraud exception rule in English courts.

Traditional analysis method and critical legal thinking.

To trigger such an exception in England, two conditions, bank’s knowledge and clear evidence, must be met to establish the fraud rule, which will be applied only if it appears in documents. The bank’s knowledge condition, the awareness of the fraud that the bank should have before the payment, is material to determine whether if the fraud rule will trigger in most of the English cases. However, if the bank is not aware of the fraud, they must honour the credit if the documents are compliant, meaning the paying bank is protected if the documents against which it made payment are tainted with fraud, even if it is not aware of the fraud. Moreover, it is not a bank’s responsibility to investigate allegations of fraud. Nonetheless, there are some reservations regarding the bank’s knowledge and clear evidence conditions, as explained above. In short, such an approach does not lead to fairness and justice for the applicant.

English courts focus more on evidence of the fraud rather than making unnecessary distinctions pertinent to the fraud exception scope. The absence of such evidence will not trigger the exception rule. Conversely, injunctions are not easily granted in England where the requirement for heavy evidence and proof of the bank’s knowledge will be obstacles. That is to say, banks are more protected in England simply because the courts want to uphold the integrity of the banking system when affirming the autonomy principle. In a case where the applicant becomes aware of the fraud, there is no other option for the applicant except to ask for an injunction from the court, which is not easy to gain under English courts. In addition, it is unclear how the court will prove that the bank is aware if there is fraud in the presented documents. In addition, the question arises as to whether the same strict standard will be required by both the applicant and the party who notified the fraud.

This paper aims to describe and explain characteristics of organizations that are victims of occupational fraud.

This study is based on a 2006 occupational fraud web survey conducted in Canada by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE).

The analysis shows that occupational fraud losses are quite large, accounting for a median loss of C$187,500 and a mean loss of C$1,142,494. These losses represent, respectively, 0.3 percent (median) and 9 percent (mean) of the victim organization's annual sales. Private companies, not‐for‐profit organizations and small businesses are particularly vulnerable to relatively larger fraud losses. It is also shown that the smaller the organization the more likely fraud losses will be relatively larger.

This study contributes to academia by measuring the statistical significance of the cost of occupational fraud per various organizational characteristics.

This study is useful to regulatory agencies and anti‐fraud professionals because it provides information about what types of organizations are more vulnerable to fraud, thus indicating where prevention and detection efforts should be directed.

This paper is based on proprietary data owned by the ACFE and is the first to analyze the statistical significance of the consequences (cost) of occupational fraud in Canada.

This paper aims to present an integrative model in predicting corporate tax fraud.

This paper is grounded on three theories, namely, the theory of reasoned action, theory of planned behaviour and the “Fraud Diamond Theory”.

By integrating these three theories, this paper proposes that individual cognitive factors, fraud diamond factors and organizational factors such as normative and control factors influence managers to commit corporate tax fraud.

Practically, the proposed integrative model enables the government and tax authority to understand on why corporate managers engage in corporate tax fraud. It will also allow them to devise practical methods and strategies to prevent the corporate managers to engage in tax fraud.

This study has merit that proposed an integrative model in predicting corporate tax fraud. Research on corporate tax fraud has been the subject of limited investigation; hence, this study contributes to the tax compliance literature by proposing an integrative model to study corporate tax fraud in a Malaysian tax setting. Future studies can be conducted to test the proposed integrative model in examining the circumstances of managers’ intention to commit corporate tax fraud.

A survey of external auditors aimed to discover the response of their organisations to the threat of computer fraud, and their opinions about risks and counter‐measures. Four main topic areas were covered: responsibility within the firm for the prevention and detection of computer fraud; what the internal audit does to prevent computer fraud; what the internal audit department does to detect computer fraud; and the opinions of internal auditors on computer fraud.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of various internal controls (i.e. hotlines, regular ethics (fraud) training, surprise audits, internal and external audits and background checks) on reducing occupational fraud losses by victim organizations.

The paper, based on data from an occupational fraud report co-authored by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) and Peltier-Rivest (2007), uses a multivariate regression analysis to analyze the effect of various internal controls on preventing fraud losses.

The authors’ analyses demonstrate that hotlines, regular ethics (fraud) training, surprise audits and internal audits all decrease fraud losses when used separately. However, hotlines and surprise audits are the only statistically significant controls when controlling for the potential correlation among all internal controls. Hotlines are associated with a reduction of 54 per cent in median fraud losses, while surprise audits cut median losses by 69 per cent.

This study contributes to academia and the anti-fraud profession by assessing the statistical effect of six internal controls on preventing fraud losses, while controlling for the potential correlation among these controls.

This study discusses the relative benefits (loss savings) of various internal controls to organizations, governments, managers and anti-fraud professionals. This information may help determine investment priorities in the context of scarce resources.

This paper is based on proprietary data owned by the ACFE and is the first to analyze the statistical significance of various internal controls on the reduction of fraud losses in Canada.