Occupational Fraud: Report to the Nations 2024.

This study represents the most comprehensive examination available of the costs, methods, victims, and perpetrators of occupational fraud. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) has been committed to the mission of combating occupational fraud—fraud committed by individuals against the organizations that employ them1 —since its founding in 1988. Occupational fraud represents a significant risk to the operations of every organization, regardless of size, industry, or region, with wide- ranging impacts for organizations victimized by this prevalent form of financial crime. Due to the nature of occupational fraud, each of the estimated 3.55 billion members of the global workforce 2 has the potential to engage in this crime, as their employers entrust them with organizational cash and assets in the ordinary course of business. Although only a small fraction of the workforce will ever commit occupational fraud, myriad factors provide the pressures, opportunities, and rationalizations that motivate and enable perpetrators to carry out their fraud schemes. These circumstances create the conditions for global fraud losses to reach trillions of dollars annually. While the true scope of fraud on a global scale is ultimately unknowable, the data contained in this report—gathered from real-world cases investigated by Certified Fraud Examiners (CFEs)—provides critical information that anti- fraud professionals can use to understand the risks posed by occupational fraud so that they can better prevent, detect, and investigate it. Each edition of this study has embodied that objective. The cases in this study were submitted by CFEs throughout the world who each responded to the ACFE’s 2023 Global Fraud Survey, answering a detailed questionnaire with 86 questions about one fraud case they investigated between January 2022 and September 2023. Drawing from 1,921 occupational fraud cases investigated by CFEs, this 13th edition of our study presents statistical analyses related to the methods used to commit, detect, and prevent occupational fraud, as well as the fraud perpetrators, the organizations they victimized, the losses those organizations suffered, and their responses to the frauds.

Note: this is global study of 1,921 cases from across all sectors (non-profit, government, public companies, private companies) in 138 countries in 8 regions “The single most effective way to detect fraud is from individual tips. 43% of frauds are  of occupational frauds were detected by a tip, which is more than 3 times  as many cases as the next common method (internal audit)