The biggest business frauds in U.S. history, Enron, and Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, cost their businesses and shareholders 60 billion dollars each.

If it’s possible for one group to do that much damage to some of the world’s largest businesses, imagine what kind of negative effect a dedicated employee could have if they were committing fraud within your company.

There are so many kinds of fraud, it seems, that there isn’t much you can do to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

That’s not necessarily true, however, and there are a number of ways that you can identify employee fraud before it gets out of hand.

Read on to discover how to identify possible fraud methods in order to keep your business running.

Types of Employee Fraud

In order to identify fraud, you need to know what form it comes in. We’ll cover some of the most common types of employee fraud that you should look out for.

Forged Checks

This is an extremely common form of fraud, although it is a little more difficult in today’s age. This is the process of an employee forging the signature of a superior on a check in order to take money from the company.

A classic example of this is Frank Abagnale, who forged hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks.

Frank was a unique example, though, because he was an exceptionally gifted conman and thief. He worked his way into becoming a fraudulent airline pilot, lawyer, and impersonated a police officer.

Theft of Inventory

This form of fraud can be more or less complicated, depending on the level of involvement that the employee has. This could be something as simple as pocketing inventory as it is being put on the shelves, or as complicated as diverting large amounts of products to do alternate warehouses in order to sell them for their own profit.

This can be combatted by keeping a close eye on the books, and making sure that all of the inventory that you purchase is received and accounted for.

Procurement Fraud

This kind of fraud typically involves an employee who is responsible for taking orders and dealing with returns. An employee might purposefully over-order a product in order to have the opportunity to return it and pocket the refund.

If no one is double checking the work of the person overseeing purchase orders, they would have an extremely easy time doing this, as a return could be scheduled to go directly into an outside account.

Worker’s Comp Fraud

This occurs in instances where an employee is injured outside of the office but claims to have been injured while working. It can be extended to that an employee is in recovery as well.

If someone is ready to come back to work but they claim to still be injured, they are receiving compensation that is not rightly deserved.

Think You’re Being Taken Advantage of?

If you think that one of your workers is committing employee fraud, you’re not out of luck. Even if you have a suspicion about someone outside of the workplace, there are ways to get the truth.