Anyone Can Commit Fraud

Anyone can commit fraud, whether it’s a CEO of a major corporation or a salesman at a local convenient store. Whatever the case may be, fraud is universal and therefore anyone can commit fraud. It was estimated that five percent of the United States revenue was lost to fraud in 2006 by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. Although five percent does not sound like a lot, that is estimated to be $652 billion dollars. What is classified as fraud and what isn’t? Fraud is intentional to deceive a person out of their assets. What fraud is not is accidental, there is no such thing as a mistaken fraudulent crime. Whatever the outcome may be, someone gets hurt
There are three reasons to commits fraud: opportunity, pressure, and rationalization. Fraud is all around us; all a person really needs is the opportunity. A person can be presented with an opportunity to commit fraudulent acts and when it seems like it’s easy to get away with free money; it’s hard to deny it. Pressure is another reason for a person to want to commit fraud. An example of pressuring into committing fraud is when a person has a family. If the opportunity arises, that person might be drawn to committing fraud in order to support his or her family. With the current economy, mortgages, loans, the increase of prices in goods, college, etc., it could pressure the most honest person to slip. The pressure to support their family and stay afloat in the treacherous waters we call our economy can break a person’s stability and moral values. Lastly, rationalization can convince a person to commit fraud. An example is if an employee that’s been working for a company for over 10 years feels unappreciated and underpaid finds out a recent graduate starts off at a higher paying position than them. They might come up with a reason to try and milk the company for all it’s worth because they feel that he or she deserves it. All these are reasons to commit fraud, which make it very tempting to pass up any opportunity to benefit oneself, without getting caught.
What does a person who commits fraud look like? Are there certain personal and physical characteristics a person is required to have in order to commits fraud? The frightening thing about fraud is that anyone could take advantage of a person, even the least expected. In recent local headlines, a woman was arrested for defrauding her customers, Penndot, and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. What is shocking is that the woman who is being charged with over 400 counts of fraud against her is 79 years old. Rose Prince, as innocent as she may seem with her frail appearance, this senior citizen provided altered registration forms to customers who register their cars to the state and pocketed the money leaving the customers with unregistered vehicles. This Pennsylvanian also pocketed sales tax resulting in thousands of dollars stolen from her customers.
There’s no way to detect a defrauder just by their appearance. Even the most respectable men can turn out to be someone who takes advantage of others to benefit themselves. Bernard Madoff, the chairman of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ), is making the front page headlines with his recent discovery of his long-term Ponzi scheme. First off, what is a Ponzi scheme? The Ponzi scheme which is also similar to the pyramid scheme is named after Charles Ponzi. The main concept of the Ponzi scheme is that as people invest their money, to continue to bring in money, new investors’ money pay off the old investors and the cycle goes on. This is what Bernard Madoff did. He took the money invested by people who trusted him and conducted the Ponzi scheme which resulted in a 50 billion dollar fraud.
Working in the retail industry, the company I work for encounter fraudulent activity numerous times. An example, a former manager at my job made a number of fraudulent transactions where he would ring up merchandise as returns and pocketed the money from each return. He stole hundreds even thousands of dollars from the company during the five month period he was managing the store. Not only did he steal money, but his actions also ruined inventory. As a result, he was terminated from the company and the company came up with new procedures for returns to prevent this from happening again.
No matter what the case may be, anyone can commit fraud. No one can be trusted with anyone’s assets so in order to keep yourself safe, it’s always better to do background checks on anyone coming in contact with your finances. If there are any red flags that are brought to attention, look into them instead of ignoring them. It leaves me with one question, who can you trust?