Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Fraud'

L'objectiu de la meva tesi és tractar i entendre millor els múltiples aspectes de la corrupció i el frau internacionals des de la perspectiva del management. Amb aquesta finalitat, hi proporciono un compendi d'articles, tots els quals han estat publicats en journals amb revisors, o bé estan en procés de ser-ho.
El primer article que presento en la meva tesi fou publicat al European Business Forum, una revista especialitzada patrocinada per la CEMS, que és llegida per més de 40.000 professionals dels negocis d'arreu d'Europa. Alguns dels diaris internacionals més importants, com ara el Times of London Newspaper, també citen aquest article a bastament. S'hi exposa per què i com es cometen els fraus.
El segon article que comento a la tesi es troba actualment en fase de "revisió i reenviament" al Journal of Business Ethics. Es tracta d'un journal sobre factors d'impacte, inclòs a la llista dels 40 millors journals de management que publica el Financial Times. Aquest article tracta de com les persones fan servir el poder per reclutar altres persones per tal que participin en el frau d'estats financers. Aquest segon article també es va sotmetre a la revisió d'àrbitres a l'edició 2007 de la European Academy of Management Conference que tingué lloc a París, França.
El tercer article que es presenta en la meva tesi fou publicat a The Journal of Digital Forensics, Security, and Law. També s'havia presentat prèviament a la XII Conferència Anual d'AMCIS amb revisors, que tingué lloc a Acapulco, Mèxic. La Conferència d'AMCIS és un dels principals congressos acadèmics que tracten dels camps relacionats amb els sistemes d'informació. Aquest tercer article analitza com els responsables de perpetrar el frau se serveixen dels principis i les estratègies de poder i negociació per enredar les persones per Internet perquè participin en projectes de frau.
El quart article que comento fou publicat a l'Information Systems Security Journal. Aquest journal fa 17 anys que el publica Taylor and Francis Publishing -una de les principals editorials de journals acadèmics-, i és la publicació oficial de CISSP i SSCP. L'article analitza les tendències actuals en matèria de frau i la seva detecció.
El cinquè article que es presenta fou publicat a la Corporate Finance Review. Aquest article tracta específicament del frau d'estats financers als Estats Units. També explica què pot fer Europa per aprendre dels errors comesos als Estats Units. La Corporate Finance Review és patrocinada per Thomson Education -una editorial líder en l'àmbit educatiu. Actualment, la revista es troba al 12è any de publicació.
Finalment, el darrer article que presento a la tesi és un comentari que es va fer sobre el tema del frau entre dos professors americans i jo mateix. Aquest diàleg es va publicar al Journal of Management, Spirituality, and Religion. El comentari tractava el tema de la relació entre organitzacions imbuïdes en la religió i el frau.
El objetivo de mi tesis es tratar de entender mejor los múltiples aspectos de la corrupción y el fraude internacionales desde la perspectiva del management. Para ello, proporciono un compendio de artículos, todos ellos publicados en journals con revisores, o bien que se hallan en proceso de publicación.
El primer artículo que presento en mi tesis fue publicado en el European Business Forum, una revista especializada patrocinada por la CEMS, que es leída por más de 40.000 profesionales de los negocios de toda Europa. Algunos de los diarios internacionales más importantes, como el Times of London Newspaper, también citan este artículo ampliamente. En él se expone por qué y cómo se cometen los fraudes.
El segundo artículo que comento en mi tesis se halla actualmente en fase de "revisión y reenvío" al Journal of Business Ethics. Se trata de un journal sobre factores de impacto, incluido en la lista de los 40 mejores journals de management que publica el Financial Times. Dicho artículo trata de cómo las personas se sirven del poder para reclutar a otras personas para que participen en el fraude de estados financieros. Este segundo artículo también fue sometido a la revisión de árbitros en la edición 2007 de la European Academy of Management Conference celebrada en París, Francia.
El tercer artículo que presento en mi tesis fue publicado en The Journal of Digital Forensics, Security, and Law. Asimismo, previamente se había presentado en la XII Conferencia Anual de AMCIS con revisores, celebrada en Acapulco, México. La Conferencia de AMCIS es uno de los principales congresos académicos que tratan de los campos relacionados con los sistemas de información. Este tercer artículo analiza cómo los responsables de perpetrar el fraude se sirven de los principios y estrategias de poder y negociación para enredar a persones por Internet para que participen en proyectos de fraude.
El cuarto artículo que comento fue publicado en el Information Systems Security Journal. Este journal es publicado desde hace 17 años por Taylor and Francis Publishing -una de las principales editoriales de journals académicos-, y es la publicación oficial de CISSP y SSCP. En dicho artículo se analizan las tendencias actuales en materia de fraude y su detección.
El quinto artículo que se presenta fue publicado en la Corporate Finance Review. Este artículo trata específicamente del fraude de estados financieros en Estados Unidos. També explica qué puede hacer Europa para aprender de los errores cometidos en Estados Unidos. La Corporate Finance Review cuenta con el patrocinio de Thomson Education -una editorial líder en el ámbito educativo. En la actualidad, la revista se halla en el 12.º año de publicación.
Finalmente, el último artículo que presento en mi tesis es un comentario sobre el tema del fraude, realizado entre dos profesores americanos y yo mismo. Dicho diálogo fue publicado en el Journal of Management, Spirituality, and Religion. El comentario trataba del tema de la relación entre organizaciones imbuidas en la religión y el fraude.
The purpose of my dissertation is to address and better understand the many aspects of International Fraud and Corruption from a Management Perspective. In my dissertation, I provide a compendium of publications. Each publication was published, or is in the process of being published, in a peer-review journal.
The first article that is presented in my dissertation was published in the European Business Forum, a CEMS sponsored journal that is read by more than 40,000 business professionals throughout Europe. Several major international newspapers, including the prestigious Times of London Newspaper, also quoted this article extensively. The article addresses why and how fraud are committed.
The second article that is presented in my dissertation is currently under "revise and resubmit" status at the Journal of Business Ethics. This journal is an impact factor journal and is included on the Financial Times list of top 40 management journals. The article addresses how individuals use power to recruit other people to participate in financial statement fraud. This second article was also presented at the peer review 2007 European Academy of Management Conference in Paris, France.
The third article that is presented in my dissertation was published in The Journal of Digital Forensics, Security, and Law. This article was also previously presented at the 12th annual peer-review AMCIS conference in Acapulco, Mexico. The AMCIS conference is one of the leading academic conferences within the information systems fields. This third article addresses how perpetrators use the principles and strategies of power and negotiation to con individuals via the Internet to participate in fraud schemes.
The fourth article presented in my dissertation was published in Information Systems Security Journal. This journal is currently in its 17th year of publication and is published by Taylor and Francis Publishing - one of the leading publishers in academic journals. This journal is also the official publication of the CISSP and SSCP. The article deals with current trends in fraud and its detection.
The fifth article that is presented in my dissertation was published in the journal Corporate Finance Review. This article specifically deals with financial statement fraud in the United States. The article further explains what Europe can do to learn from the mistakes of the United States. Thomson Education - a leader in educational publishing, is the sponsor of Corporate Finance Review. The journal is currently in its 12th year of publication.
Finally, the last article presented in my dissertation is a commentary that took place on the subject of fraud between two American professors and myself. The dialogue was published in the Journal of Management, Spirituality, and Religion. The topic of the commentary was on the relationship between organizations embedded in religion and fraud.

This thesis examined the alignment between regulations, government guidelines and fraud governance practices in the Australian public sector in efforts to minimise procurement fraud. Through analysis of three recent fraud cases studies, the interface between public sector anti-fraud governance frameworks and how they translate into workplace enforcement practices were considered for purposes of identifying enhanced ways for reducing this type of crime in the future.

Healthcare fraud is a major problem within the healthcare industry. The study examined medical fraud, its laws, and punishments on federal and state levels. It compared medical fraud to non-fraud crimes done in the healthcare industry. This comparison will be done on a state level. The study attempted to analyze the severity of fraud against non-fraud and that doctors would commit fraud offenses more often than non-fraud offenses.

La presente investigación busca entender la importancia de la aplicación de la Auditoría Forense como herramienta de apoyo en empresas del sector transporte. Para tal fin se analizó conceptos, métodos y herramientas que son utilizados para la reducción del fraude financiero y tributario, además se revisaron los conceptos de Control, Fraude Financiero y Tributario del sector de transporte de carga terrestre. Para el plan de investigación, se plantea la hipótesis del Impacto de la Auditoría Forense como herramienta de apoyo, para detectar y reducir el fraude financiero y tributario en las empresas del sector transporte. Dicha hipótesis alternativa es rechazada con un 5% de significancia. En la metodología de investigación, se ejecutó un estudio de tipo documental, el cual fue llevado a cabo por entrevistas a tres expertos del tema. Para ello, se elaboró un cuestionario con el propósito de identificar si se tenía conocimiento sobre Auditoría Forense, y conocer sobre los procesos de control con los que cuentan las empresas del rubro. Como resultado de la aplicación del instrumento cualitativo y cuantitativo, se puede establecer que mediante la aplicación de la Auditoría Forense como herramienta de apoyo se logra detectar y prevenir fraudes. De esta forma, se demuestra que la Auditoría Forense brinda ventajas y que al implementarla como herramienta de apoyo se obtienen grandes resultados. Luego del respectivo análisis de interpretación de los resultados de dicha investigación, se puede concluir que la aplicación de la Auditoría Forense como herramienta de apoyo no reducirá los casos de robos y fraude intencionales: a mayor control en los procesos se disminuirá las posibilidades de cometer fraude y se incrementará un mayor control en las áreas más sensibles del rubro.
This research seeks to understand the importance of the application of Forensic Audit as a support tool in companies in the transport sector. For this purpose, concepts, methods and tools that are used for the reduction of financial and tax fraud were analyzed, and the concepts of Control, Financial and Tax Fraud of the land freight transport sector were also reviewed. For the research plan, the hypothesis of the Impact of Forensic Audit is presented as a support tool, to detect and reduce financial and tax fraud in companies in the transport sector. This alternative hypothesis is rejected with a 5% significance. In the research methodology, a documentary study was executed, which was carried out by interviews with three experts on the subject. For this, a questionnaire was prepared with the purpose of identifying if there was knowledge about Forensic Audit, and knowing about the control processes that the companies in the field have. As a result of the application of the qualitative and quantitative instrument, it can be established that through the application of Forensic Audit as a tool to support internal auditing, fraud can be detected and prevented. In this way, it is demonstrated that Forensic Audit offers advantages and that when implementing it as a support tool, great results are obtained. After the respective analysis of interpretation of the results of said investigation, it can be concluded that the application of Forensic Audit as a support tool will not reduce cases of intentional theft and fraud: greater control in the processes will reduce the chances of committing fraud and greater control will be increased in the most sensitive areas of the item.
Tesis

This paper uses statistical learning to examine and compare three different statistical methods with the aim to predict credit card fraud. The methods compared are Logistic Regression, K-Nearest Neighbour and Random Forest. They are applied and estimated on a data set consisting of nearly 300,000 credit card transactions to determine their performance using classification of fraud as the outcome variable. The three models all have different properties and advantages. The K-NN model preformed the best in this paper but has some disadvantages, since it does not explain the data but rather predict the outcome accurately. Random Forest explains the variables but performs less precise. The Logistic Regression model seems to be unfit for this specific data set.

This thesis investigates fraud and the situation on Internet with e-commerce today, to point on some potential threats and needed countermeasures. The work reviews several state of the art e-fraud schemes, techniques used in the schemes and statistics on the extent of e-fraud. This part shows that e-frauds are today both sophisticated and widespread.

Since real world frauds are deemed impossible to fully cover in order to predict potential new e-frauds, the thesis adopts a different approach. It suggests two abstraction models for fraud cases, a protocol model and a functional model. These are used to perform analysis on case studies on both telecom frauds and e-frauds. The analysis presents characteristics for both types of frauds. Using one of the abstraction models, the functional model, conceptually similar cases among telecom frauds as well as e-fraud cases are identified. The similar cases in each category are then compared, using the other abstraction model, the protocol model. The study shows that concepts from telecom frauds already exist in e-frauds.

Several challenges and some possibilities in e-fraud prevention and detection are also extracted in the comparative study of the different categories. The major consequence of the challenges is e-frauds’ higher scalability compared to telecom frauds.

Finally, this thesis covers several existing countermeasures in e-commerce along with specific countermeasures against auction fraud, phishing and spam. However, it is shown that these countermeasures do not address the challenges in e-fraud prevention and detection to a satisfactory extent. Therefore, this thesis proposes several high-level countermeasures in order to address the challenges.

Mestrado em Contabilidade, Fiscalidade e Finanças Empresariais
Segundo a Teoria do Triângulo da Fraude, para ocorrer um comportamento fraudulento é necessário combinar "incentivo", "oportunidade" e "racionalização". Este estudo teve como finalidade averiguar a postura dos administradores e directores financeiros perante a fraude, abordando apenas o lado do incentivo. O presente estudo teve como base um inquérito enviado para administradores e directores financeiros de Sociedades Anónimas Portuguesas. No estudo foram analisadas variáveis sociodemográficas (género, idade, nível de habilitação, posse de habilitação académica na área financeira, estado civil) e variáveis organizacionais (número de trabalhadores da organização, tratar-se de uma empresa familiar ou estar incluída num grupo económico, assim como o sector de actividade em que está inserida). Os resultados obtidos mostram que não existe um perfil específico de modo a uma pessoa se sentir incentivada para cometer fraude.
According to the theory of the Fraud Triangle, for a fraudulent behaviour to occur it is needed to combine "incentive", "opportunity" and "rationalization". This study had the goal to find out how the administrators and financial directors react when confronted by fraud, approaching only the incentive side. The present study was based on an enquire sent to administrators and financial directors of Anonymous Portuguese Societies. In this study were analysed sociodemographic variables (gender, age, qualification level, possession of financial related academic qualification, civil status) and organizational variables (number of workers in the organization, being a family business or to be included in an economic group, as well as the activity sector it is part of). The results showed there is not a specific profile that incentives a person to commit fraud.

Mestrado em Gestão e Estratégia Industrial
Estima-se que a fraude marítima - fraude cometida envolvendo navios e ou carga transportada por via marítima - cause actualmente perdas e prejuízos que podem ascender anualmente a vários biliões de dólares americanos. O transporte marítimo de mercadorias é uma actividade abrangentemente regulada por via do direito marítimo, pelo que, a compreensão da natureza jurídica do navio ou o estudo do alcance que determinados documentos comportam, como o conhecimento de embarque (Bill of Lading), são aspectos necessários ao entendimento das particularidades da fraude marítima. A par da complexidade legal e documental intrínsecas às actividades de transporte marítimo de mercadorias, aspectos como o seu carácter internacional e o elevado número de agentes que intervêm no sector, são vistos como factores críticos à ocorrência de fraudes na esfera do transporte marítimo. Com base neste enquadramento, a investigação conclui que a tecnologia Blockchain, enquanto uma DLT - Distributed Ledger Technology, especialmente por via da resolução da problemática do double spending sem recurso a uma entidade centralizadora, e uma vez ultrapassados os desafios de adopção generalizada da tecnologia, pode vir a mitigar ou mesmo resolver grande parte da problemática da fraude marítima tal qual se conhece, especialmente a de carácter documental.
It is estimated that maritime fraud - fraud involving ships and / or cargo transported by sea - is currently causing losses up to several billion US dollars annually. Maritime freight is an activity that is broadly regulated through maritime law, so understanding the legal nature of the ship or examining the scope of certain documents, such as the Bill of Lading, is necessary to comprehend the maritime fraud. In addition to the legal and documentary complexity inherent in maritime freight transport activities, aspects such as its international character and the large number of agents involved in the sector are seen as critical factors for the occurrence of maritime fraud. Based on this framework, the research concluded that Blockchain technology, while DLT - Distributed Ledger Technology, especially by solving the problem of double spending without recourse to a centralization entity, and once overcome the challenges of general adoption of the technology, can mitigate or even solve much of the problems of maritime fraud as it is known, especially those involving documents.
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Segundo relatório da auditoria KPMG, 69% das empresas admitiram ser vítimas de algum tipo de fraude. Em 2010, no setor bancário foram perdidos aproximadamente R$ 1,5 bilhões devido às fraudes financeiras cometidas em clientes considerando apenas as fraudes documentais e as perdas com fraudes bancárias eletrônicas superaram os 900 milhões neste mesmo ano. Os tipos de fraudes cometidas foram diversos, dentre eles a fraude durante a abertura de contas, cheques clonados, falsificação de documentos, alterações de códigos de barras e clonagem de cartões. A fraude é um problema frequente nas organizações e bastante discutido no mercado, porém verificou-se a existência de uma lacuna teórica quando se trata de gestão da fraude externa. O objetivo do trabalho foi a estruturação de um quadro conceitual para a Gestão da Fraude Financeira e a sua comparação com a prática.Este é um estudo qualitativo exploratório e foi realizado por meio da análise baseada na Teoria Fundamentada definindo categorias a partir da literatura disponível e a sua comparação com entrevistas feitas em um banco de varejo brasileiro e uma associação de instituições financeiras, além dos artigos jornalísticos. Com relação à utilização dos resultados esta é uma pesquisa aplicada já que seu resultado pode, além de contribuir para a discussão teórica, ser aplicada em qualquer organização interessada em gerir a fraude financeira. Os resultados da elaboração do quadro conceitual mostram que a gestão da fraude financeira externa tem quatro fases: a Contínua, a Prevenção, Detecção e a Reação e as categorias definidas estão inseridas nelas. Quanto à comparação da teoria com a prática, nem todos os aspectos verificados na literatura puderam ser encontrados nos relatos das entrevistas e nos artigos jornalísticos analisados.
According to KPMG audit report, 69% of companies admitted being victims of some kind of fraud. In 2010, the banking sector have lost approximately R$ 1.5 billion due to financial fraud perpetrated on customers considering only documentary fraud and the electronic banking fraud losses exceeded R$ 900 million in the same year. The types of fraud were many, including fraud during account opening, cloned checks, forgery, alteration barcode and card cloning. Fraud is a common problem in organizations and widely discussed in the market, however it was found that there is a theoretical gap when it comes to managing external fraud. The objective of this research was to structure a conceptual framework for the Management of Fraud and its comparison with the practice. This is an exploratory qualitative study and was conducted through analysis based on Grounded Theory defining categories from the available literature and interviews with comparison to a bank and an association of financial institutions, in addition to news articles. Regarding the use of results is an applied research its result can also contribute to the theoretical discussion, and be applied to any organization interested in managing financial fraud. The results of the development of the conceptual framework shows that the management of external financial fraud has four phases: Continuous, Prevention, Detection and Reaction and the defined categories are located in them. Regarding the comparison of theory with practice, not all aspects verified in the literature could be found in the reports of interviews and newspaper articles analyzed.

Evidence gathered from major fraud investigations over the last decade has revealed that auditors in these cases failed to attend to fraud red flags within the substantive testing evidence. Research in psychology regarding inattentional blindness (IB) provides a theoretical framework for explaining why auditors may be prone to missing fraud red flags. This study examines the presence of IB during the performance of substantive testing and proposes two distinct interventions. Each intervention is predicted to improve auditor fraud detection. In a scenario involving fraudulent revenue transactions, findings show that a slight modification to the standard audit procedures significantly improves an auditor’s detection of red flags indicative of fraud. A second intervention involving the performance of a strategic reasoning task did not yield significant results. Overall, the results suggest that audit firms should consider making a cost effective adjustment to their standard audit program to improve fraud detection.

Mestrado em Contabilidade, Fiscalidade e Finanças Empresariais
Este estudo tem como objetivo perceber quais os fatores que têm influência na decisão de denúncia de atos fraudulentos por parte dos auditores portugueses. Foram consideradas dez variáveis determinantes na decisão de denúncia de atos fraudulentos: o conhecimento de políticas de Whistleblowing, a adequação dos canais de reporte, a dimensão da empresa, a formação, a gravidade do ato fraudulento, o género, a idade e experiência profissional, a existência de retaliação e a existência de legislação. Foi realizado um questionário online utilizando cenários que descrevem situações que poderão ocorrer no âmbito de um trabalho de auditoria, tendo sido solicitada a colaboração de todas as empresas de auditoria registadas na base da Informa D&B em Portugal, e foram obtidas 445 respostas completas. Os resultados indicam que dos determinantes acima mencionados, o conhecimento das políticas de Whistleblowing, a adequação dos canais de reporte, a dimensão, a formação e a adequação da formação são as variáveis que influenciam a decisão dos auditores de denunciar atos fraudulentos.
This study aims to understand which factors influence Portuguese auditors' decision to whistle blow. Ten determinants were considered as possible influencers of the decision to blow the whistle: knowledge of Whistleblowing policies, the adequacy of reporting channels, the size of the company, training, the severity of the act fraudulent, gender, age and professional experience, the existence of retaliation and the existence of legislation. An online survey was conducted using scenarios that described situations that may occur in the course of an audit work, having been requested the cooperation of all audit firms registered at Informa D&B database in Portugal, and were obtained 445 complete responses. The results indicate that of the determinants mentioned above, knowledge of Whistleblowing policies, the adequacy of reporting channels, the size, training and the training quality are the variables that influence the decision of the auditors to report fraudulent acts.

This thesis seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the Scots law of fraud. Adopting a method that is both historical and doctrinal, it provides a critical analysis of the current understanding of fraud and argues for an approach that is more consistent with Scotland’s legal history which, in turn, was profoundly influenced by a much older tradition of European legal thought. It begins by exploring the historical scope of fraud in both a criminal and civil context with specific focus on questions of definition and the extent to which “fraud” was used in the broader sense of activities not involving deceit. A detailed analysis is given of the widespread concept of presumptive fraud by means of which Scots law was able to provide a remedy for unfair or unwarrantable behaviour without any requirement for a deceitful intention and for misstatements made unintentionally. The argument is made that presumptive fraud was a mechanism for delivering substantive justice and that its conceptual roots lie in an Aristotelian understanding of justice as equality. A comparison is made between the scholastic doctrine of restitution, which was developed by Thomas Aquinas as the outworking of the Aristotelian virtue of justice, and the scheme of Scots law created in the Institutions of the Law of Scotland by Viscount Stair (1619-1695), who is said to be the founding father of Scots law. It is suggested that the religious and philosophical conditions which existed in seventeenth century Scotland were particularly fertile soil for scholastic legal ideas which conceptualised law within a moral and religious framework. The second half of the thesis undertakes a doctrinal analysis of fraud in three parts. First, the complex relationship between fraud, error and misrepresentation is examined and the case is made that misrepresentation, whether intentional or unintentional, sits more comfortably in the law of fraud than in the law of error. Secondly, modern legal literature is critically assessed and the dominant modern narrative – that error induced by misrepresentation is a native concept in Scots law – is questioned. Thirdly, a new taxonomy of fraud is proposed which distinguishes between primary and secondary fraud. The operation of secondary fraud (which amounts to “participation” in the primary fraud of another and therefore involves three-party situations) is explored through the application of two familiar legal maxims: the “fraud” principle (that no one should be enriched through the fraud of another) and the good faith purchaser for value. In the context of secondary fraud, it is argued that the criteria for its operation - mala fides and a gratuitous transaction - are both core components of the older concept of presumptive fraud. The thesis comes full circle as it is suggested that while the broader equitable definition of fraud, rooted in equality, may have disappeared in the context of primary fraud, secondary fraud retains it.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2005.
Thesis research directed by: Business and Management. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

Magister Scientiae Dentium - MSc(Dent) (Community Oral Health)
Healthcare fraud wastes money that could be spent in the treatment of patients. The exact amount of healthcare fraud is very difficult to determine, especially in a two-tier healthcare system like South Africa. The amount and cost of dental fraud in South Africa has never been researched. If the amount and cost of fraud in a specific area can be determined, resources can be better used to combat healthcare fraud in the future.

This thesis consists of three empirical papers that investigate the impacts of equity incentives on accounting fraud from the perspective of the risk it presents for CEOs and controlling shareholders. As a prerequisite for this thesis, the first paper investigates whether AAERs constitute a reliable accounting fraud database, despite their partial coverage of misreporting cases and the resource constraints of the SEC. Using comprehensive samples covering three financial misreporting databases from the U.S., I find that, compared to securities class action lawsuits and restatements, AAERs are composed of firms that are more likely to represent material accounting irregularities, which are characterised by aggressive adoption of accruals, strong financing needs, and significant market impact of misreporting cases. The second paper investigates whether CEOs change their misreporting behaviours at higher levels of equity incentives, at which they may begin to seriously consider the risk side of incentives. Using both unmatched and matched accounting fraud samples from the U.S., I find that, contrary to misreporting patterns at average equity incentives, CEOs’ option delta is negatively associated with accounting fraud propensity, whereas their stock ownership is positively related to this at respectively higher levels. The third paper examines the extent to which, in the context of accounting fraud, controlling shareholders’ control-ownership wedge interacts with their ownership concentration - a common feature of business groups - and with the additional imposition of government regulation on Korean chaebols. Using matched samples from Korea, I find that control-ownership wedge is positively associated with accounting fraud propensity, whereas business group and chaebol affiliations are not. Overall, the results suggest that the impacts of equity incentives on accounting fraud propensity hinge critically on how CEOs and controlling shareholders perceive the risk of accounting fraud commitment.

Este trabalho identifica sob o contexto da tecnologia, negócio, engenharia social e investigação a ocorrência de fraudes sobre o ambiente Internet Banking. A pesquisa relata a evolução dos métodos utilizados pelos fraudadores para efetivação da fraude desde seu o início, no ano de 2002 à evolução na sofisticação dos meios utilizados para os ataques até meados de 2005. Como a análise se baseou em um estudo de caso, coletou-se um número quantitativo de incidentes no período de um ano permitindo entender neste escopo a tendência de ataques aos clientes de serviços Internet Banking. E com pleno domínio do assunto, o trabalho traz recomendações para a contenção destes incidentes, através de três linhas de ação; sobre usuários finais, provedores e sobre o fraudador.
This research identifies under the technology, business, social engineering and inquiry context the occurrence of fraud on Internet Banking environment. It covers the evolution of the methods used for deceivers since from the beginning, in the year of 2002, and his evolution in the sophistication in several ways used for attacks until 2005. The analysis is based on a case study and a quantitative number of incidents in the period of one year were collected making possible to see the point of such purpose the trend of attacks on Interne t Banking customers. With full domain of this one’s subject, this research brings suggest for incident containment three lines of action; on final users, suppliers and deceivers.

After the Great Recession of 2007 there was a spotlight on executive compensation. The magnitude and structure of executive pay became an area of concern to the public. As a result, company management across all sectors had to find a way to offer competitive compensation plans that aligned the interest of shareholders with that of executives. The outcome was an increased focus on tying executive pay to company performance. The level of fixed-pay incorporated into target compensation began to decreases rapidly and was replaced by “at-risk” compensation. For some, this was a major achievement in the world of executive compensation, however, others view this change as potentially dangerous. I chose to analyze the pay-mix structure and annual incentive plans of a group of bellwether companies to see if this transition is increasing company’s exposure to fraud. In this essay I attempt to tie increases in at-risk pay to increases in fraud risk, while identifying incentive goals affected by common fraud practices.

La fraude par carte de crédit est devenue un problème majeur dans le secteur des paiements électroniques. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions la détection de fraude basée sur les données transactionnelles et abordons plusieurs de ces défis complexes en utilisant des méthodes d'apprentissage automatique visant à identifier les transactions frauduleuses qui ont été émises illégitimement au nom du titulaire légitime de la carte. En particulier, nous explorons plusieurs moyens d’exploiter les informations contextuelles au-delà des attributs de base d’une transaction, notamment au niveau de la transaction, au niveau de la séquence et au niveau de l'utilisateur. Au niveau des transactions, nous cherchons à identifier les transactions frauduleuses qui présentent des caractéristiques distinctes des transactions authentiques. Nous avons mené une étude empirique de l’influence du déséquilibre des classes et des horizons de prévision sur la performance d d'un classifieur de type random forest. Nous augmentons les transactions avec des attributs supplémentaires extraits de sources de connaissances externes et montrons que des informations sur les pays et les événements du calendrier améliorent les performances de classification, particulièrement pour les transactions ayant lieu sur le Web. Au niveau de la séquence, nous cherchons à détecter les fraudes qui sont difficiles à identifier en elles-mêmes, mais particulières en ce qui concerne la séquence à court terme dans laquelle elles apparaissent. Nous utilisons un réseau de neurone récurrent (LSTM) pour modéliser la séquence de transactions. Nos résultats suggèrent que la modélisation basée sur des LSTM est une stratégie prometteuse pour caractériser des séquences de transactions ayant lieu en face à face, mais elle n’est pas adéquate pour les transactions ayant lieu sur le Web. Au niveau de l'utilisateur, nous travaillons sur une stratégie existante d'agrégation d'attributs et proposons un concept flexible nous permettant de calculer de nombreux attributs au moyen d'une syntaxe simple. Nous fournissons une implémentation basée sur CUDA pour pour accélerer le temps de calcul de deux ordres de grandeur. Notre étude de sélection des attributs révèle que les agrégats extraits de séquences de transactions des utilisateurs sont plus utiles que ceux extraits des séquences de marchands. De plus, nous découvrons plusieurs ensembles d'attributs candidats avec des performances équivalentes à celles des agrégats fabriqués manuellement tout en étant très différents en termes de structure. En ce qui concerne les travaux futurs, nous évoquons des méthodes d'apprentissage artificiel simples et transparentes pour la détection des fraudes par carte de crédit et nous esquissons une modélisation simple axée sur l'utilisateur
Credit card fraud has emerged as major problem in the electronic payment sector. In this thesis, we study data-driven fraud detection and address several of its intricate challenges by means of machine learning methods with the goal to identify fraudulent transactions that have been issued illegitimately on behalf of the rightful card owner. In particular, we explore several means to leverage contextual information beyond a transaction's basic attributes on the transaction level, sequence level and user level. On the transaction level, we aim to identify fraudulent transactions which, in terms of their attribute values, are globally distinguishable from genuine transactions. We provide an empirical study of the influence of class imbalance and forecasting horizons on the classification performance of a random forest classifier. We augment transactions with additional features extracted from external knowledge sources and show that external information about countries and calendar events improves classification performance most noticeably on card-not-present transaction. On the sequence level, we aim to detect frauds that are inconspicuous in the background of all transactions but peculiar with respect to the short-term sequence they appear in. We use a Long Short-term Memory network (LSTM) for modeling the sequential succession of transactions. Our results suggest that LSTM-based modeling is a promising strategy for characterizing sequences of card-present transactions but it is not adequate for card-not-present transactions. On the user level, we elaborate on feature aggregations and propose a flexible concept allowing us define numerous features by means of a simple syntax. We provide a CUDA-based implementation for the computationally expensive extraction with a speed-up of two orders of magnitude. Our feature selection study reveals that aggregates extracted from users' transaction sequences are more useful than those extracted from merchant sequences. Moreover, we discover multiple sets of candidate features with equivalent performance as manually engineered aggregates while being vastly different in terms of their structure. Regarding future work, we motivate the usage of simple and transparent machine learning methods for credit card fraud detection and we sketch a simple user-focused modeling approach

Fraud risk assessment is an important audit process that has a direct impact on the effectiveness of auditors' fraud detection in an audit. However, prior literature has shown that auditors are generally poor at assessing fraud risk. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) suggests that auditors may improve their fraud risk assessment performance by adopting a fraud specialist mindset. A fraud specialist mindset is a special way of thinking about accounting records. While auditors think about the company's recorded transactions in terms of the availability of supporting documentations and the authenticity of the audit trail, fraud specialists think instead of accounting records in terms of the authenticity of the events and activities that are behind the reported transactions. Currently there is no study that has examined the effects of the fraud specialist mindset on auditors' fraud risk assessment performance. In addition, although recent studies have found that fraud specialists are more sensitive than auditors in discerning fraud risk factors in situation where a high level of fraud risk is present, it remains unclear whether the same can be said for situation where the risk of fraud is low. Thus, the purpose of my dissertation is to examine the effects of fraud specialist and audit mindsets on fraud risk assessment performance. In addition, I examined such effects on fraud risk assessment performance in both high and low fraud risk conditions. The contributions of my dissertation include being the first to experimentally examine how different mindsets impact fraud-related judgment. The results of my study have the potential to help address the PCAOB's desire to improve auditors' fraud risk assessment performance though the adoption of the fraud specialist mindset. In addition, my study contributes to the literature by exploring fraud-related problem representation as a possible mediator of mindset on fraud risk assessment performance. I executed my dissertation by conducting an experiment in which mindset (fraud specialist or audit) was induced prior to the completion of an audit case (high or low in fraud risk). A total of 85 senior-level accounting students enrolled in two separate auditing classes participated in my study. The results from my experimental provide empirical support that it is possible to improve auditors' fraud risk assessment through adapting the fraud specialist mindset. My study also provides preliminary evidence that individuals with the fraud specialist mindset developed different problem representations than those with the audit mindset.

Mestrado em Contabilidade, Fiscalidade e Finanças Empresariais
O presente estudo tem como finalidade analisar o modo como os auditores externos lidam com a fraude, nomeadamente a fraude de relato financeiro. A análise em questão aborda as várias fases de uma auditoria, desde a planificação até ao momento que se emite uma opinião. Irá também ser abordada a relação entre os anos de experiência profissional de um revisor oficial de contas (ROC) e a sua opinião acerca da fraude, ou seja, se esta se vai ou não alterando tendo em conta os anos de experiência. Numa primeira fase foram abordados os temas mais pertinentes, possibilitando um enquadramento teórico sobre o âmbito do tema em causa, exemplificando-o também com um caso real e os seus impactos. Posteriormente, de modo a efetuar o estudo, foi elaborado um questionário direcionado exclusivamente aos ROC. Este, foi respondido por 80 profissionais de auditoria, com análise pormenorizada em cada uma das 18 questões, tendo em conta a sua frequência absoluta e relativa. Os resultados obtidos através da análise de médias, indicam que a variável da experiência profissional não tende a influenciar a opinião dos ROC. Deste modo, ao longo das várias fases de trabalho de uma auditoria a opinião acerca da fraude tende a ser a mesma, independentemente dos anos de experiência em causa.
The main purpose of this study is to analyze how external auditors deal with fraud, namely financial reporting fraud, by addressing all the numerous phases of an audit, from planning until the moment an opinion is given. The connection between the years of professional experience of a statutory auditor and his opinion about fraud, in other words, whether or not the latter changes taking in consideration the years of work experience, will also be addressed. The first part of this thesis focuses on the most relevant subjects, allowing not only a theoretical framework on the scope of the subject in question, but also by exemplifying it with a real case and its impacts. Subsequently, in order to carry out the study, a questionnaire was developed exclusively for statutory auditors. It was answered by 80 auditors, with detailed analysis on each of the 18 questions, taking into account their absolute and relative frequency. The results obtained through the analysis of rates demonstrate that the variable of professional experience does not tend to influence the opinion of the statutory auditors. Therefore, the opinion on fraud tends to be the same throughout the various stages of an audit work, irrespective of the years of experience involved
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

O rumo que o mercado financeiro está tomando ao oferecer canais eletrônicos de atendimento a seus clientes traz consigo uma significativa preocupação com a segurança dos canais eletrônicos: o crescente ataque de quadrilhas fraudadoras. Neste sentido, os valores movimentados para aumentar a segurança dos canais e as perdas resultantes de ataques criminosos desta natureza exige a necessidade de disponibilizar serviços eletrônicos mais robustos e confiáveis. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo principal o levantamento de requisitos para o um processo de prevenção a fraudes eletrônicas em instituições financeiras. Para isto, o trabalho se propõe a apresentar um (i) estudo de requisitos da qualidade no processo de prevenção a fraudes eletrônicas em uma instituição financeira e (ii) a utilização de métodos qualitativos para identificação de requisitos em um processo de prevenção a fraudes eletrônicas. A principal contribuição deste trabalho é a apresentação de uma relação de requisitos, técnicos e funcionais, necessários para o estabelecimento e monitoramento de um processo de prevenção a fraudes eletrônicas para instituições financeiras que ofertam canais eletrônicos a seus clientes.
The direction that the financial market is taking to provide electronic channels for customer services brings along a significant concern with the security of electronic channels: the growing number of attacks by fraudsters. In this sense, values mobilized to increase the security of such channels and with the losses resulting from criminal attacks of this nature require the need to provide stronger and more reliable electronic services. The main objective of the present study is the identification of requirements for a process of electronic fraud prevention in financial institutions. For this purpose, the work is proposed to submit a (i) study of quality requirements in case of electronic fraud prevention at a financial institution and (ii) the use of qualitative methods for identification of requirements into a process of electronic fraud prevention. The main contribution of this study is the presentation of an inventory of functional and technical requirements, necessary for the establishment and monitoring of a process of electronic fraud prevention for financial institutions, which provide electronic channels for their clients.

During the last ten years, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of cases involving incidents of fraud in standby letters of credit. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effect of fraud on standby letters of credit transactions. This study principally deals with standby letters of credit issued under the 1983 Revision of the Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits, drafted by the International Chamber of Commerce, which is a set of internationally recognized rules for documentary credit operations. Due to the international character of letters of credit law, I have adopted a comparative approach that deals with materials from the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany and Switzerland. This thesis will first show that there are two types of standby letters of credit, which have to be distinguished because they involve different obligations and risks for the parties. A device payable against the beneficiary's simple statement will be described as a "simple statement" standby credit, whereas a device payable against a set of documents will be called a "documentary" standby credit. The thesis will then demonstrate why the treatment of fraud should not be the same for "simple statement" standby credits and "documentary" standby credits.
Law, Peter A. Allard School of
Graduate

This research provides a "rich insight'' into the management of Information Systems (IS) security within the context of computer fraud committed by employees. It argues that management within organisations can impact the understanding of employees (at low-level positions) as to what is 'acceptable" practice when abiding by IS security policies and procedures. Therefore, the growing problem of computer fraud does not occur because of "bad people', but rather because of IS security loopholes within the organisation. Such loopholes can create 'suitable opportunities' where employees may find that the rewards of committing an act are higher than the chances of being caught. This research departs from the traditional functionalist view and approaches the problem of computer fraud from a socio-technical perspective to employ an interpretive research approach. This constitutes a major contribution to IS security studies. It uses the Crime Specific Opportunity Structure model from criminology, as the conceptual framework for initial data collection of the single embedded case study. The findings of the case study (at Technology Corporation) suggest that perceptions of IS security held by employees at high-level positions influence how employees at low-level positions comply with IS security guidelines. To illustrate this argument, this research introduces the notion of "Shared Responsibility" from victimology to reduce the gap between "espoused theory' and 'theory-in-use'. Although, there were no 'reported' cases of computer fraud committed by employees in Technology Corporation, implications are drawn on the role management's perceptions about IS security play in the context of facilitation, precipitation and provocation and consequently, a working environment created where k suitable opportunities' may exist for employees to commit computer fraud (input type in particular).

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited
MBA Professional Report
Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited
The purpose of this research is to provide guidance that will increase awareness and facilitate class discussions on ethical situations that contracting officers are exposed to during their business relationships with contracting firms. The cases explore the specifics of individual incidents of ethical and procedural procurement violations. Additionally, this study provides conclusions and recommendations that could better educate prospective contracting officers of the temptations and legal ramifications of violations of procurement fraud within their commands.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited
The purpose of this research project is to explore the viability of detecting anomalies through using data analytics software as a tool in procurement fraud prevention and to analyze its potential policy implications on federal procurement stakeholders. According to a survey conducted in 2012 by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, organizations lose an estimated 5% of their revenues to fraud each year. In order to relate this estimate to the Department of Defense (DOD), this estimated percentage was applied to the requested DOD FY 2013 budget of $613.9 billion outlined in the Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Overview, resulting in a projected total fraud loss of $30.7 billion. The use of data analytics software has the potential to not only detect fraudulent procurements, but also to help deter fraudulent activities before they occur. The results of this research study will be a recommendation on the use of data analytics as a tool to detect anomalies that may indicate procurement fraud in DOD organizations.

The concern to understand why people act in the way they do has preoccupied the social sciences since their very inception. At the heart of this concern is the question of how we might best theorise the relationship between individual action (agency) and social context (structure). This relationship is the focus of this thesis and it has been explored theoretically and empirically through a qualitative study of benefit fraud. Theoretically, four sociological concepts - discourses, resources, normative guidelines and identity - are argued to be central to the relationship between structure and agency. Taken together, these concepts offer a valuable template to explore social action in general and, in particular, why people engage in fraudulent action. The research involved in-depth interviews with a socially diverse snowball sample of 16 people engaged in benefit fraud. Three key points emerged from the analysis of the interview narratives. First, benefit fraud (and social action more generally) can be understood through acknowledging the resource-configurations within which individuals exist. Resources are conceptualised as financial, social and/or ontological and their contingent nature is highlighted. The research demonstrates how the availability, accessibility and acceptability of resources changes with time and place, as well as being influenced by discourses, normative guidelines and self-identity. Second, discourses are shown to have a shaping influence upon the normative guidelines underpinning individual action. However, this does not occur in a straightforward way, since actors critically negotiate with the discursive matrix within which they are embedded. Third, it is argued that individual accounts of fraudulent action are about much more than motivation - their primary purpose for the individual is the (re)construction of moral adequacy in the context of lives lived at the margins - socially, materially and normatively. This research aims to present a more robust theorisation of benefit fraud than much previous work in this field and, in addition, to contribute new empirical insights on the complex and contingent nature of resources and moral accounts. The thesis ends with an exploration of the theoretical, methodological and policy implications of the research.

The fear of crime is one of the most widely researched phenomena in criminology. Traditionally, researchers have relied upon the 'sociological staples' of sex, race, age and social class to explain the fear of crime. However, it has been shown that the relationships between fear and these factors are both uncertain and unreliable. In this thesis, I suggest by analysing the fear of crime within an explanatory framework of well-being, we move towards a better understanding of fear at an individual level. I demonstrate that, by interpreting crime as a violation of autonomy and well-being, individual levels of fear are more easily understood. The thesis is driven by a critical analysis of the traditional approaches to the study of fear of crime. From a contextual perspective, I argue that, in order to understand fear in a modem, evolving society, one must look to the future and explore the changing nature of crime. Thus, I aim to force a reconsideration of the concept of 'crime' within the paradigm of the victimisation survey. In recognising the imminent increase in fraudulent crimes, I challenge the traditional exclusion of fraud from victimisation surveys. I demonstrate that the victims of plastic card fraud are worthy subjects for study. The thesis is informed by empirical work carried out during the period of doctoral research. Having been commissioned by the Research Development and Statistics Directorate of the Home Office to review the survey measurement of the fear of crime, I was given the opportunity to design questions about plastic card fraud for the British Crime Survey 2000. Analysis of the data suggests that plastic card fraud prompts different reactions than do other crimes. I conclude that the harm suffered by the victims of card fraud may extend beyond pure financial loss to a violation of identity.

This thesis analyzes the problem of corruption in the Mexican government procurement system, aiming to provide a mix of legal and policy solutions to combat and prevent it. Comparing the policies and laws that make up the regulatory framework of public procurement in Canada and Mexico, this study seeks to extract the best practices that can improve the Mexican system. This text illuminates how the weaknesses within Mexico’s procurement system has provoked the current exploitation of alternative procurement methods (known as “adjudicación directa” and “invitación a cuando menos tres personas”) to embezzle public resources through fictitious contract awards. Although we have seen a tendency towards including requirements for “transparency” and “accountability” into Mexican procurement law, this on its own is insufficient to combat corruption. Consequently, I argue that procurement units have to enhance these transparency policies by disclosing the rationale behind every procurement and contract award prior to the disbursement of the resources; having competition as the maximum principle to fulfill while doing so. This will allow auditing bodies (and Mexican citizens) to scrutinize the rationale behind these disbursements. The Public Function Secretary could oversee this process to validate the legality and the social benefit justifications claimed by the procurement units prior to utilizing alternative procurement methods.

Thesis (MSc)--University of Stellenbosch, 2005.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Cellular network operators globally loose between 3% and 5% of their annual revenue to telecommunications fraud. Hence it is of great importance that fraud management systems are implemented to detect, alarm, and shut down fraud within minutes, minimising revenue loss. Modern proprietary fraud management systems employ (i) classification methods, most often artificial neural networks learning from classified call data records to classify new call data records as fraudulent or legitimate, (ii) statistical methods building subscriber behaviour profiles based on the subscriber’s usage in the cellular network and detecting sudden changes in behaviour, and (iii) rules and threshold values defined by fraud analysts, utilising their knowledge of valid fraud cases and the false alarm rate as guidance. The purpose of this thesis is to establish a context for and evaluate the performance of well-known data mining techniques that may be incorporated in the fraud detection process. Firstly, a theoretical background of various well-known data mining techniques is provided and a number of seminal articles on fraud detection, which influenced this thesis, are summarised. The cellular telecommunications industry is introduced, including a brief discussion of the types of fraud experienced by South African cellular network operators. Secondly, the data collection process and the characteristics of the collected data are discussed. Different data mining techniques are applied to the collected data, demonstrating how user behaviour profiles may be built and how fraud may be predicted. An appraisal of the performances and appropriateness of the different data mining techniques is given in the context of the fraud detection process. Finally, an indication of further work is provided in the conclusion to this thesis, in the form of a number of recommendations for possible adaptations of the fraud detection methods, and improvements thereof. A combination of data mining techniques that may be used to build a comprehensive fraud detection model is also suggested.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Sellulêre netwerk operateurs verloor wêreldwyd tussen 3% en 5% van hul jaarlikse inkomste as gevolg van telekommunikasie bedrog. Dit is dus van die uiterse belang dat bedrog bestuurstelsels geïmplimenteer word om bedrog op te spoor, alarms te genereer, en bedrog binne minute te staak om verlies aan inkomste tot ’n minimum te beperk. Moderne gepatenteerde bedrog bestuurstelsels maak gebruik van (i) klassifikasie metodes, mees dikwels kunsmatige neurale netwerke wat leer vanaf geklassifiseerde oproep rekords en gebruik word om nuwe oproep rekords as bedrog-draend of nie bedrog-draend te klassifiseer, (ii) statistiese metodes wat gedragsprofiele van ’n intekenaar bou, gebaseer op die intekenaar se gedrag in die sellulêre netwerk, en skielike verandering in gedrag opspoor, en (iii) reëls en drempelwaardes wat deur bedrog analiste daar gestel word, deur gebruik te maak van hulle ondervinding met geldige gevalle van bedrog en die koers waarteen vals alarms gegenereer word. Die doel van hierdie tesis is om ’n konteks te bepaal vir en die werksverrigting te evalueer van bekende data ontginningstegnieke wat in bedrog opsporingstelsels gebruik kan word. Eerstens word ’n teoretiese agtergrond vir ’n aantal bekende data ontginningstegnieke voorsien en ’n aantal gedagteryke artikels wat oor bedrog opsporing handel en wat hierdie tesis beïnvloed het, opgesom. Die sellulêre telekommunikasie industrie word bekend gestel, insluitend ’n kort bespreking oor die tipes bedrog wat deur Suid-Afrikaanse sellulˆere telekommunikasie netwerk operateurs ondervind word. Tweedens word die data versamelingsproses en die eienskappe van die versamelde data bespreek. Verskillende data ontginningstegnieke word vervolgens toegepas op die versamelde data om te demonstreer hoe gedragsprofiele van gebruikers gebou kan word en hoe bedrog voorspel kan word. Die werksverrigting en gepastheid van die verskillende data ontginningstegnieke word bespreek in die konteks van die bedrog opsporingsproses. Laastens word ’n aanduiding van verdere werk in die gevolgtrekking tot hierdie tesis verskaf, en wel in die vorm van ’n aantal aanbevelings oor moontlike aanpassings en verbeterings van die bedrog opsporingsmetodes wat beskou en toegepas is. ’n Omvattende bedrog opsporingsmodel wat gebruik maak van ’n kombinasie van data ontginningstegnieke word ook voorgestel.

Fraud is a threat that most online service providers must address in the development of their systems to ensure an efficient security policy and the integrity of their revenue. Amadeus, a Global Distribution System providing a transaction platform for flight booking by travel agents, is targeted by fraud attempts that could lead to revenue losses and indemnifications. The objective of this thesis is to detect fraud attempts by applying machine learning algorithms to bookings represented by Passenger Name Record history. Due to the lack of labelled data, the current study presents a benchmark of unsupervised algorithms and aggregation methods. It also describes anomaly detection techniques which can be applied to self-organizing maps and hierarchical clustering. Considering the important amount of transactions per second processed by Amadeus back-ends, we eventually highlight potential bottlenecks and alternatives.

The law is stated as at July 2006, before the enactment of the United Kingdom Fraud Act 2006. This thesis covers ‘serious’ corporate fraud and not commonplace petty fraud. I examined corporate fraud, concentrating on a comparison of the United Kingdom’s fraud with that of two civil law neighbouring countries, France and Germany, both with high financial activity, and also with a few American states, common law systems like the English legal system. The objective of this study is to identify ways of combating fraud in the UK by enquiry and discovery as to how fraud occurs and how the two different legal systems- civil and common law- treat fraud. The study reveals factors contributing to corporate fraud and recommendations for combating corporate fraud. Exploring the concept of fraud, my findings are that corporate fraud is facing exponential increase, with the UK government beginning to acknowledge this. I examined the agencies that combat fraud in the states mentioned above including the UK. Although the UK is party to an impressive number of Treaties, which help to combat fraud, treaties dealing with terrorism, drug dealing, money laundering, and other organised crime, corporate fraud is still a serious problem. The conclusions can be summarised as follows. The UK could learn much from the French legal system and the way France prosecutes corporations as per Articles 132, 222, 432, 433 and 435 of the French Penal Code. Germany’s Criminal Code is equally comprehensive in its prescriptive definitions of frauds including corporate frauds as in chapters 8, 19, 2, 23, 24, 25, 26 and 30 of the German Criminal Code. The new UK’s non-codified general, core, offence of fraud, with fraud offences maintained in other statutes such as the Companies Act, likens the UK fraud regulation closer to the US’s with its Criminal Code and other statutes that deal with fraud. The UK has not yet caught up with the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 as regards electronic business systems’ rules. The USA’s federal prescriptive code for fraud offences is akin to the French and German criminal codes and these are found in US Federal Penal Code Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47, sections 1020 to 1084. Legal privilege is fraud exempt in the United but not in France and Germany. Legal privilege in the UK is partly exempt for SFO investigations and mandatory money laundering reporting.

Although there is a growing volume of research on various kinds of fraud, relatively little has been written about insurance fraud. Even fewer studies have been undertaken on the prevention of insurance fraud. This study aims to fill this gap. It focuses not on large-scale corporate fraud but on individuals ‘fiddling’ their home, motor and travel policies. During the course of this study, the researcher surveyed the public and found that insurance fraud is commonplace, and committed by people of different classes— often unwittingly, and rarely with much regret. Insurance companies were surveyed, and data collected by interviews with insurance staff. It emerged that many insurers did not realise they had an insurance fraud problem, and those that did were either doing little to prevent it or were using ineffective methods. Insurance fraudsters are often given a great deal of help, often by officials who abuse the trust placed in them; insurers’ relationship with the police and with loss adjusters is not geared to stopping fraudsters, and insurance fraud is thus rendered easier. To illustrate this, and with the help of an insurance company, the researcher conducted a mock insurance fraud, and found it easy to commit. This study shows that insurance fraud is mostly an opportunistic crime. Within the study of crime prevention there is an approach which seeks to reduce the number of offences by curtailing the opportunities for crime. This is known as ‘situational crime prevention’, and is based on the ‘rational choice perspective’. Professor Ron Clarke, whose name is most closely associated with the approach, has called for more research to apply the principles and techniques of opportunity reduction to a range of crime types. This thesis represents an attempt to do this in relation to insurance fraud, and in so doing to stimulate ideas on how insurance fraud can be tackled effectively. In addition, it offers a new perspective on the situational approach and the techniques of opportunity reduction, plus a revised classification of these techniques. At the same time it offers a critique of the situational approach itself. The findings suggest that if fraud within the insurance industry is to be taken seriously then there are a range of structural concerns that need to be tackled, and that this moves beyond the scope of situational prevention.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics, May, 2020
Cataloged from the official PDF of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
Fraud and corruption are serious issues which undermine the provision of public goods. This thesis consists of three papers which analyze the economics of fraud and the mechanisms by which it can be detected and averted. An introductory chapter presents an overview of the economic ideas surrounding these topics. In the αrst paper, I analyze a US federal law that incentivizes whistleblowers to litigate against fraud and misreporting committed against the Medicare program. I provide a theoretical framework for understanding the economic tradeoffs associated with privatized whistleblowing enforcement and then empirically analyze the deterrence effects of whistleblower lawsuits. In the second paper, conducted as joint research, we consider the incentives for misreported enrollment statistics in Israeli public school data and the way in which data manipulation undermines economic estimates of the returns to smaller class sizes. We provide evidence of enrollment manipulation and show that smaller class sizes have no effect on student achievement, overturning earlier literature. In the third paper, we develop a mechanism for detecting misreported αnancial data and apply it to reports from a World Bank project. Our results are consistent with strategic and proαtable falsiαcation of data, and our method matches the results of an audit conducted independently by the World Bank on the same project.
by Jetson Leder-Luis.
Ph. D.
Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics

Business Administration/Finance
Ph.D.
A series of high-profile corporate fraud scandals in the early 2000s have drawn the attention from the public, regulators, and academia. These cases of the high-profile corporate fraud imply that the existing institutions are lack of incentives and monitoring. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of different governance mechanisms in limiting the fraud propensity. Chapter 1 investigates whether monitoring by non-CEO executives can effectively reduce the likelihood of CEOs committing corporate fraud. Controlling for other traditional governance mechanisms, we find that firms with stronger non-CEO executives monitoring have a lower probability of committing fraud. Monitoring by non-CEO executives appears to be a substitute for traditional governance channels, as it is more effective when traditional governance mechanisms are weak. Moreover, we argue that monitoring by non-CEO executives fails to prevent corporate fraud if both CEO and subordinate executives involve in the fraud event. Finally, the strength of such monitoring is larger in more heterogeneous industries, where the human capital of non-CEO executives is less replaceable. Chapter 2 examines the association between employee relation and the firm's incentive of committing fraud. We find that firms treating their employees fairly (as measured by employee relation ratings) have less incentive in committing fraud. Better employee relation facilitates interest alignment between shareholders and the management. Moreover, we find that the CEO duality weaken the negative association between employee relation and the likelihood of fraud commitment. Furthermore, we find that the negative association is more pronounced in R&D-intensive industries, where human capital is more valuable to firm performance. The results are robust to alternative models and measures. Chapter 3 examines the association between corporate political connection and corporate fraud, and its detection, in China for 2003-2009. Using the enforcement action data from the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), we find that corporate political connection is an important determinant of corporate fraud, while the type of ultimate owner is also relevant. Politically connected firms are 27% less likely to be detected by the CSRC conditional on their fraud commitment. Low detection rate in turn implies that politically connected firms have 23% more probability to commit fraud than non-connected firms. Government controlled firms are 21% less likely to be investigated by the CSRC. However, due to the irrelative tie between firm performance and management team's compensation and promotion, government controlled firms are 12% less likely to commit fraud. Furthermore, we find that our results are mostly driven by the local political connection rather than the central political connection. Finally, our results provide information that can inform policy debates among the regulation policy makers.
Temple University--Theses

Accounting Fraud is one of the most harmful financial crimes as it often results in massive corporate collapses, commonly silenced by powerful high-status executives and managers. Accounting fraud represents a significant threat to the financial system stability due to the resulting diminishing of the market confidence and trust of regulatory authorities. Its catastrophic consequences expose how vulnerable and unprotected the community is in regards to this matter, since most damage is inflicted to investors, employees, customers and government. Accounting fraud is defined as the calculated misrepresentation of the financial statement information disclosed by a company in order to mislead stakeholders regarding the firm’s true financial position. Different fraudulent tricks can be used to commit accounting fraud, either direct manipulation of financial items or creative methods of accounting, hence the need for non-static regulatory interventions that take into account different fraudulent patterns. Accordingly, this study aims to identify signs of accounting fraud occurrence to be used to, first, identify companies that are more likely to be manipulating financial statement reports, and second, assist the task of examination within the riskier firms by evaluating relevant financial red-flags, as to efficiently recognise irregular accounting malpractices. To achieve this, a thorough forensic data analytic approach is proposed that includes all pertinent steps of a data-driven methodology. First, data collection and preparation is required to present pertinent information related to fraud offences and financial statements. The compiled sample of known fraudulent companies is identified considering all Accounting Series Releases and Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission between 1990 and 2012, procedure that resulted in 1,594 fraud-year observations. Then, an in-depth financial ratio analysis is performed in order to evaluate publicly available financial statement data and to preserve only meaningful predictors of accounting fraud. In particular, two commonly used statistical approaches, including non-parametric hypothesis testing and correlation analysis, are proposed to assess significant differences between corrupted and genuine reports as well as to identify associations between the considered ratios. The selection of a smaller subset of explanatory variables is later reinforced by the implementation of a complete subset logistic regression methodology. Finally, statistical modelling of fraudulent and non-fraudulent instances is performed by implementing several machine learning methods. Classical classifiers are considered first as benchmark frameworks, including logistic regression and discriminant analysis. More complex techniques are implemented next based on decision trees bagging and boosting, including bagged trees, AdaBoost and random forests. In general, it can be said that a clear enhancement in the understanding of the fraud phenomenon is achieved by the implementation of financial ratio analysis, mainly due to the interesting exposure of distinctive characteristics of falsified reporting and the selection of meaningful ratios as predictors of accounting fraud, later validated using a combination of logistic regression models. Interestingly, using only significant explanatory variables leads to similar results obtained when no selection is performed. Furthermore, better performance is accomplished in some cases, which strongly evidences the convenience of employing less but significant information when detecting accounting fraud offences. Moreover, out-of-sample results suggest there is a great potential in detecting falsified accounting records through statistical modelling and analysis of publicly available accounting information. It has been shown good performance of classic models used as benchmark and better performance of more advanced methods, which supports the usefulness of machine learning models as they appropriately meet the criteria of accuracy, interpretability and cost-efficiency required for a successful detection methodology. This study contributes in the improvement of accounting fraud detection in several ways, including the collection of a comprehensive sample of fraud and non-fraud firms concerning all financial industries, an extensive analysis of financial information and significant differences between genuine and fraudulent reporting, selection of relevant predictors of accounting fraud, contingent analytical modelling for better differentiate between non-fraud and fraud cases, and identification of industry-specific indicators of falsified records. The proposed methodology can be easily used by public auditors and regulatory agencies in order to assess the likelihood of accounting fraud and to be adopted in combination with the experience and instinct of experts to lead to better examination of accounting reports. In addition, the proposed methodological framework could be of assistance to many other interested parties, such as investors, creditors, financial and economic analysts, the stock exchange, law firms and to the banking system, amongst others.

碩士
國立雲林科技大學
財務金融系
105
Due to false financial statements, corruption, asset misappropriation, manipulation of stocks, occurs a series of corporate fraud in the early Taiwan, despite the administration has improved the part of the supervision systems, it could not prevent the corporate fraud completely. This paper will develop the most suitable prediction model for the corporate fraud, by using the ratio of 1:2 as sample for the corporate fraud and the non-fraud company listed in Taiwan by 1997 to 2015. Considering the integrity of the fraud’s factors, we select financial statements, corporate governance, market transactions and macro-economics as research variables. Different from the past corporate fraud related literature, through different types of the fraud and its timing based on the year before the fraud, and use the methods of decision tree, random forest and logistic regression to predict. The empirical results show that: (1) In the analysis of the decision tree, random forest and logistic regression, the variables of financial statements, corporate governance, market transactions are more significant. (2) Under the prediction of fraud and non-fraud companies, testing group which distinguish into fraud types has a higher correct rate. (3) Under the prediction of fraud company, either in testing or training group which distinguishes into fraud types has a higher correct rate. In addition, testing group of false financial statements completely predict correct. In conclusion, it is better to use distinction of fraud types as approach to predict the most suitable prediction model.

碩士
開南大學
會計學系
99
This essay is mainly researching on Rebar fraudulent. For instance, setting up numerous dummy corporations for releasing corporate bone, cleaning out, inflation of corporation financial figures, insider trading, concealing of share and control marketing price artificially, violated securities trading and so on. Due to government’s authority overlooking internal control and collusion between Rebar and Visa accountant, they cause one of the largest finical scams in Taiwan. As we could see, authorities and visa accountant not only leading the most important role to prevent from embezzlement; they are accountable for overseeing the finical statement provided by Local Corporation. According to Ge and Mc Vay (2005) - SOX bill, they found the main problem with internal control is assigned account. However, that is not the only flaw because there are more other elements may cause serious problem indirectly in the process of internal control and affects the quality of the financial statement. First, Individual should be a core of the problem; said Ge and Vay (2005). Inadequate person or lacking in training may lead to improper internal control. Finally, CEO should be key man. Such as, CEO’s attitude toward internal control and the framework of management for weak company should affect the result of the internal control.

Fraud vulnerability among older consumers is still without conclusive scientific evidence. Therefore, the following paper analysed two potential causes for increased vulnerability. Firstly, the likelihood that older consumers are a preferred target for persuasion. Secondly, if older consumers are more likely to fall for fraud than younger ones. Both variables were tested with two unique online experiments (Prolific) in which 315 U.S residents participated. These experiments did not provide evidence on the above cited potential causes for increased vulnerability, as many participants believed the “too good to be true” claims in the experiments. Younger participants even showed characteristics that increase the likelihood to fall victim to investment fraud, such as being greedy, trusting their gut feeling, the fear of missing out and the willingness to take high financial risks.

Wirecard AG, a forward-thinking corporation that aimed to reshape the payment industry, declared bankruptcy in June 2020. The company reported missing a total of EUR 1.9 billion, assuming they had probably never existed. This incident harmed the credibility of the German’s financial regulator and the reputation of the external auditors. Wirecard’s Annual Reports and other sources, such as the Financial Times newspaper, were examined in light of the thirty-seven red flags identified in Murcia and Borba’s (2007) study, which was supported on the International Standard Auditing (ISA) 240, to determine whether the red flags included in this standard were sufficient to indicate potential Financial Statement fraud in the Wirecard case. Twenty-four of the thirty-seven red flags examined sign potential fraud. Nineteen of these red flags are included in ISA 240, leading to the conclusion that the red flags present in that standard were sufficient to indicate potential Financial Statement fraud in the Wirecard case, and any outsider analyst could have detected and incorporated these early warning alarms into their decision-making. This also makes clear that auditors neglected the red flags signalization in the Wirecard case. Although ISA 240 proved to be effective, five of the twenty-four red flags were absent in this standard. These red flags are significant since they expose business issues, implying that a modification of ISA 240 to integrate similar essential red flags is required to make this standard more effective. Moreover, the Wirecard case raised six new significant red flags that can be incorporated in ISA 240.
Wirecard AG, uma empresa inovadora que prometeu revolucionar a indústria de pagamentos, declarou falência em junho de 2020. A empresa deu como desaparecido um total de 1,9 biliões de euros, assumindo que provavelmente estes nunca tinham existido. Este incidente prejudicou a credibilidade da entidade reguladora alemã e a reputação dos auditores externos. Relatórios Anuais da Wirecard e outras fontes, como o jornal Financial Times, foram analisadas à luz de trinta e sete bandeiras vermelhas identificadas no estudo de Múrcia e Borba (2007), apoiado pela International Standard on Auditing (ISA) 240, para determinar se as bandeiras vermelhas presentes nesta norma eram suficientes para indicar potencial fraude nas Demonstrações Financeiras no caso Wirecard. Vinte e quatro das trinta e sete bandeiras vermelhas examinadas sugerem potencial fraude. Dezanove destas bandeiras vermelhas estão incluídas na ISA 240, permitindo concluir que as bandeiras vermelhas presentes nesta norma eram suficientes para indicar potencial fraude nas Demonstrações Financeiras no caso Wirecard, e qualquer analista externo à empresa poderia ter detetado e incorporado estes sinais prévios na sua tomada de decisão. Esta informação também evidencia que os auditores negligenciaram a sinalização das bandeiras vermelhas. Embora a ISA 240 tenha provado ser eficaz, cinco das vinte e quatro bandeiras vermelhas estavam ausentes nesta norma. Estas bandeiras vermelhas são significativas, pois expõem problemas nas empresas, implicando que uma modificação na ISA 240 para integrar bandeiras vermelhas essenciais similares é necessária de forma a torna-la mais eficaz. Adicionalmente, o caso Wirecard revelou seis novas bandeiras vermelhas significativas que podem ser incorporadas na ISA 240.

碩士
中原大學
財經法律研究所
107
In recent years, many fraudulent financial fraud cases have occurred in ROC''s securities market. The company faces the dilemma of bankruptcy reorganization, it also caused investors to suffer damage to the company or false financial reports, investors are more likely to request compensation from the company or the company''s principal through the Securities and Exchange Act. The civil liability of securities fraud is regulated in Article 20 paragraph 1 of the Securities and Exchange Act, which is the general rule of ROC ''s law against securities fraud, and paragraph 3 of the same article is its civil liability for violation; Article 20 paragraph 2 of the Securities and Exchange Act, For the disclosure of financial statement fraud, the legal effect is regulated in Article 20-1. Although securities fraud is clearly stated in the Securities and Exchange Act, there are still many problems to be clarified in the constitutional elements of civil liability, such as the subjective elements, compensation and responsibility subjects, causal relation, etc., which leads to many difficulties in the implementation of the practice, which seriously jeopardizes the operation and fairness of the securities market, so the thesis will target the trading market. Article 20 paragraph 1 and Article 20-1 of the Securities and Exchange Act, the core of securities fraud and financial statement fraud, is to discuss the elements of its elements.

碩士
國立臺北大學
犯罪學研究所
94
The objective of this research is, first, to determine the demographic characteristics of repeat fraud victims, second, to explore the victimization situation, third, to identify the time effects in relation to victimization, and finally, to illustrate the typologies of frauds. Further combat strategies are proposed based on the findings. According to the Taiwan national database, a total of 16,718 subjects reported a fraud event from January to June in 2005. Additionally, a total of 301 had been repeat victims of fraud. Parameters of interest in this research are analyzed between these groups using suitably chosen statistical methodologies. Results show that the majority of the fraud victims were male, aged 20-29, high-school or university graduates, and industry or mining employed. The first fraud event often happened between 12 to 3 pm in prosperous cities with an average loss amount of NT$ 145,484 dollars per subject. And by now, only a quarter (1/4) of the events had been uncovered. Furthermore, mean time to the next fraud event is 20.1 days. Repeat victims were screened according to risk factors: (1) personal traits (2) timing (3) typologies. Possible anti-fraud measures include:(1) utilization of the mass media (2) use of community and schools guidance(3) household visits to high risk repeat victims (4) workshops on avoidance strategies for high risk repeat victims (5) always double check the truthfulness of incoming calls and mail. The third strategy is to encourage the greater cooperation between governmental and financial institutions, especially working processes. Fourth, create a more systematic and comprehensive crime type classification for the offence of fraud.