If at least one percent of every organization’s top line is lost to fraud under normal circumstances, how does a remote working environment affect these losses? Because fraud and corruption have been documented in sources going back over two thousand years, new events do not necessarily increase or decrease the propensity for people to commit unethical acts. However, circumstances and new technologies can certainly open new avenues for bad actors. We cannot look everywhere at once; therefore, it is always important for us to focus our vigilance on areas we know to be particularly concerning.
The primary goal of this session will be to examine where the remote working environment renders us more vulnerable. Hear how much fraud it is out there, and how appears in not-for-profit organizations, what types of business environments allow frauds to proliferate, how remote work environments aggravate certain problems already inherent in standard internal control systems, the types of frauds that have spiked since the global lockdowns began, and how to conduct effective pre-mortem reviews to improve the organization’s ability to detect and address problems early.
Scott Langlinais, CPA/Managing Partner/Langlinais Fraud and Audit Advisory Services/Dallas