As the clandestine and unlawful characteristics of financial crime render its identification, measurement and evaluation of consequential economic harm challenging, elucidates Katherine Gillespie, top dog of KPMG Ireland and its Forensic division.
Payment Card Fraud
Extracting funds from our accounts by exploiting jeopardised banking details denotes payment card fraud. “The surge of e-shopping and online dealings provides a fertile ground for fraudsters. Coupled with technological advancement, the multiplication of spurious websites has made it increasingly tough to spot the authentic ones”, articulates Gillespie.
Asset misappropriation (inclusive of embezzlement)
The most rampant form of workplace scamming is asset misappropriation, which manifests as employees pilfering or misemploying a corporation’s assets, be it cash or otherwise.
“While such fraudulence may not invariably result in significant losses for enterprises, desperation triggers its occurrence. Folks feel cornered by elements such as gambling dependencies, medical dilemmas, or incapacitating debts. Temptation of easy financial windfall and greed also stimulates such fraudulent activities,” Gillespie explains.
Despite their prevalent use in other arenas of life, tools and applications haven’t been standardised in healthcare environments yet.
Money Laundering
Money laundering denotes the technique of obscuring the origins of illicit revenues, such as those obtained from corruption, drug and human trafficking, or terrorist financing.
“Offenders aim to utilise and expend these ‘purified’ proceeds, evading the radar of law enforcing bodies. The mounting concern in this domain is the proliferation of money mules – individuals unwittingly assisting criminal networks, lured by compensation. People seldom contemplate the distress endured to acquire the funds they are assisting to launder.”
Cybercrime
Cybercrime is ubiquitously existent, targeting both individuals and corporations. “It encompasses activities ranging from infiltrating a company’s IT structure, demanding a ransom, to camouflaged emails from a supplier or superior personnel soliciting payments. Often a sense of immediacy is invoked, and victims realise they have been connived upon retrospectively,” cautions Gillespie.
Investment Fraud
Scams related to investments materialise when individuals are persuaded to put their money into non-existent plans or projects. These scams become more prevalent when the orchestrator misappropriates the investors’ funds for personal benefits. In an era of declining interest rates, individuals are scouting for unconventional methods to make their money work harder, inadvertently creating loopholes for fraudulent activities.