Previous courses have outlined the concepts of fraud as defined by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) within their fraud tree.  The tree delineates the three major categories of fraud as:

• Corruption
• Asset Misappropriation
• Financial Statement Fraud

Fraud impacts every person and every organization.  Regardless of size, structure, geography, or demographics, every organization is subject to fraud.  Many individuals refer to fraud "red flags." 

These are signs that indicate there is the potential for fraud to occur.  Red flags do not mean a fraud has occurred. 

There are many presentations on “top frauds”. Be cognizant of how the presenter is focusing the discussion. Top frauds could relate to various areas. Examples of top fraud schemes include: financial statement, revenue/disclosures/ presentation, cyber and internet/personal frauds, asset misappropriation, and corruption.

In this course, we review information on the top fraud schemes by focusing on the three categories as defined by the ACFE fraud tree.   We also evaluate the most common schemes by industry as outlined by the ACFE 2016 report to the Nations.

Note: Information within this course comes from readily available public domain documents and is utilized by the trainer as a supplement for relaying the course content.