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Determining the full cost of occupational fraud is an important part of understanding the depth of and motivation for the fraud problem. News reports provide visibility to the largest cases, and most of us have heard stories of employees who have brazenly stolen from their employers. Even so, fraud is all too often treated as an anomaly in the business process rather than a common example of the risk faced by all organizations. Unfortunately, obtaining a comprehensive or exact measure of the financial impact of fraud and corruption on organizations is challenging, if not impossible. Because fraud inherently involves efforts of concealment, many fraud cases will never be detected, and of those that are, the full amount of losses might never be determined or reported. Consequently, any attempt to quantify the extent of all occupational fraud losses will be, at best, an estimate. As part of the ACFE's research in its Report to the Nations, each CFE who participated in the survey was asked to provide his or her best assessment of the percentage of annual revenues that the typical organization loses to fraud. The median response indicates that organizations lose an estimated 5 percent of their revenues to fraud each year. To illustrate the magnitude of this estimate, applying the percentage to the 2011 estimated gross world product of $70.28 trillion results in a projected global total fraud loss of more than $3.5 trillion. It is imperative to note that this estimate is based on the collective opinion of antifraud experts rather than on specific data or factual observations, and should thus not be interpreted as a literal calculation or extrapolation of the exact and total worldwide cost of fraud against organizations. Even with that caveat, however, the approximation provided by more than 1,00 °CFEs from all over the world with a median 11 years of experience as professionals who have a firsthand view of the fight against fraud may well be the most reliable measure of the cost of occupational fraud available and certainly emphasizes the undeniable and extensive threat posed by these crimes.

Of the 1,388 individual fraud cases reported in the ACFE survey, 1,379 included information about the total dollar amount lost to fraud, as shown in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Distribution of Dollar Losses.

Source: ACFE, Report to the Nations, 2012.

Individuals commit occupational fraud costing businesses considerable sums of money, worldwide a potential global fraud loss of more than $3.5 trillion, according to the ACFE report. The median loss, the report states, was $140,000. More than one-fifth of the frauds involved losses of at least $1 million and the frauds lasted a median of 18 months before being detected. It can be seen that any methodology that can be used to improve fraud risk management must be seriously considered.