Book review: Corporate Fraud: the Human Factor

This is a highly practical text on fraud rather than an academic treatment of the subject. The authors have drawn on decades of practical experience of fraud investigators from around the world to present a distilled perspective on fraud prevention, detection and investigation. The stated purpose of the book is to enable you to look at your organisation through a lens that magnifies the signs that you may have otherwise missed, leaving you better equipped to deal with the discovery of fraud and to better protect your organisation from fraud in the future.

Given the incentive and opportunity, any employee is capable of committing a fraud, so distinguishing the potential rogue employee from those who are the backbone of the business is difficult.

The first line of defence for an organisation is employees, customers and suppliers who blow the whistle. However, automated tools can now spot the trails of fraud at an early stage through intelligent data analysis – once the right prevention and detection mechanisms are in place. The authors conclude that a combination of both defences creates the strongest protection against fraudsters.