Fraud Auditing, Detection, and Prevention Blog

On which day of the year are online dates most vulnerable to fraud schemes?

Valentine’s day -- the heart wants what the heart wants! Does this make us vulnerable?

In the USA alone, romance swindles cost how many millions of dollars in one year?

Romance frauds resulted in losses of over $300 million in the US in 2021.

How does the sophistication of fraud concealment, apply to online dating fraud?

The romance scammer uses techniques to make you believe that their love for you is real. Fraudsters, also use techniques to make fraudulent transactions look real!

As per the commonly understood fraud triangle there, are three typical components why someone would commit a fraud scheme: motive, opportunity, and rationalization. While motive and rationalization are factors that could be limited to individual behavior and psychology, opportunity is something your internal controls can and should account for.

Within rationalization, anyone involved in a fraud scheme needs to have the ability and opportunity to conceal and commit fraud. There is a direct relationship between having the opportunity to commit fraud and having the ability to conceal the fraud and so auditors need to consider both opportunity and the ability to conceal in the design of an audit plan.

Knowing which common concealment strategies might have been deployed by any given fraud scheme is an essential part of any approach to preventing and detecting fraud. Let’s examine concealment in more detail.