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.