Once again, the issue of fraud is making a big splash on major news networks. No one is exempt from fraud and quite often, government contractor cases are huge.
But just because your business is not at risk for a multi-million dollar theft, that doesn’t mean that you should be any less vigilant about fraud. As a matter of fact, the article Battling the Medicare Fraud ‘Epidemic’ identifies one of the easiest and most lucrative fraud schemes around.
The fraud we see here is called a “billing fraud”. One version of this scheme happens when a legitimate vendor either over bills for goods or services, or they submit multiple copies of the same invoice.
To increase the probability of catching overstated invoices, an auditor can match the order quantities and pricing between 1) the purchase order, 2) the receiving documents and, 3) the invoice.
To prevent multiple copies of the same invoice from slipping through, the invoice data should be searched for duplicate invoice numbers every few months. These are simple steps that can be taken to minimize the chance of fraud or reduce the amount of a fraud by identifying it quickly.
Share your tips for reducing fraud at your workplace or ask me a question, below, in the Comments section.
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