Financial reporting fraud is a concern for investors, regulators, external auditors, and the public. Although the responsibility for fraud detection lies upon management and those charged with governance, external auditors are likely to come under scrutiny if fraud scandals come to light. Despite the audit regulators efforts in fighting fraud, evidence from prior literature revealed that external auditors still need guidance in assessing and responding to fraud risks. Hence the current study aims at helping external auditors properly assess and respond to the risk of financial reporting fraud in an effort to increase the likelihood of detecting it. In order to achieve this, the current study sought to explore the significance of various fraud factors in assessing the risks of financial reporting fraud and examined how external auditors could assess these fraud factors. The current study also explored the likely motivations behind management fraud, the impact of management motivations on the financial statements, and how external auditors could assess the impact of management motivations. The data for the current study was collected from external auditors working at various audit firms in Egypt via the use of mixed research methods, namely through an online questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The findings of the current study revealed that management motives are the most significant factor in assessing the risk of financial reporting fraud. Hence the current study suggests that external audit should be viewed in terms of management motivations rather than just the audit of financial statements figures and disclosures. The current study offers detailed guidance to external auditors in this area. The findings of the current study also revealed that management integrity is a significant factor in assessing the risk of financial reporting fraud and that rationalisation of fraud should be assessed as part of management integrity rather than a separate fraud risk factor. The current study found that fraud perpetrators capabilities are equally significant to the opportunity to commit fraud factor yet it is currently ignored by the audit standards and thus should be assessed as part of opportunity to commit fraud. The current study was the first to explore financial reporting fraud and the extent by which external auditors comply with ISA 240 in the Egyptian context. The current study offered recommendations to external auditors, audit firms, audit regulators, and the Egyptian government on how to combat financial reporting fraud. Potential areas for future research were also identified by the current study.

The insurance fraud is frequent type of criminality at the present time. The perpetrators of this crime cause heavy economic damages to insurance companies. Objective of the thesis called "The insurance fraud in the Czech Republic" is to evaluate the current state of the problem of insurance fraud in the Czech Republic from the perspective of insurance companies, law enforcement authorities and new legislation. As well to describe the way of detection and investigation, characterize the offender, analyze the most frequent cases, typical methods of committing insurance fraud and to evaluate the statistics and trends from previous years. In the thesis are explained the principles of detecting insurance fraud in insurance companies and the preventive measures. Part of the thesis is to identify weaknesses in the fight against the insurance fraud.

ERP system has shaped the way modern organisations design, control, and execute business processes. It has not only paved the way for efficient use of organisational resources but also offered the opportunity to utilise data logged in the system for ensuring internal control. The key contribution of this research is that it has resulted in a method which can practically be employed by internal auditors for measuring internal fraud risk of business organisations with ERP systems, by utilising process mining technique and evidential reasoning in the form of Bayesian theorem, in a much more effective way compared to conventional frequentist method. The other significant contribution is that it has paved the way for combining process mining technique and evidential reasoning in addressing problems prevalent within organisational contexts. This research has contributed in developing IS theories for design and action especially in the area of soft systems methodology as it has relied on business process modelling in addressing the issue of internal fraud risk. The chosen method has contributed in facilitating incorporation of design science method in problem solving. Researchers have focused on applying data mining techniques within organisational contexts for extracting valuable information. Process mining is a comparatively new technique which allows business processes to be analysed based on event logs. Analysis of business processes can be useful for organisations not only for attaining greater efficiency but also for ensuring internal control inside the organisation. Large organisations have various measures in place for ensuring internal control. Measuring the risk of fraud within a business process is an important practice for preventing fraud as accurate measurement of fraud risk provides business experts with the opportunity to comprehend the extent of the problem. Business experts, such as internal auditors, still heavily rely upon conventional methods for measuring internal fraud risk way by of random check of process compliance. Organisations with ERP systems in place can avail themselves of the opportunity to use event logs for extending the scope of assessing process conformance. This has not been put into practice as there is a lack of well researched methods which can allow event logs to be utilised for enhancing internal control. This research can be proved to be useful for practitioners as it has developed a method for measuring internal fraud risk within organisations. This research aimed to utilise process mining technique that allows business experts to exert greater control over business process execution by allowing the internal fraud risk to be measured effectively. A method has been developed for measuring internal fraud risk of business originations with ERP systems by using process mining and Bayesian theorem. In this method, rate of process deviation is calculated by conducting process mining on relevant logs of events and then that process deviation rate is applied in Bayesian theorem along with historic internal fraud risk rate and process deviation rate calculated manually for arriving at a revised internal fraud risk rate. Bayesian theorem has been relied upon for the purpose of developing this new method as it allows evidential reasoning to be incorporated. The method has been developed as a Design Science Research Method (DSRM) artefact by conducting three case-studies. Data has been collected from three case companies, operating in readymade garments manufacturing industry, pharmaceuticals industry, and aviation industry, regarding their procurement process for conducting process mining. The revised internal fraud risk rates were then evaluated by considering the feedback received from respective business experts of each of the case company. The proposed method is beneficial as it has paved the way for practitioners to utilise process mining using a soft system methodology. The developed method is of immense significance as it has contributed in the field of business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) and the big data analytics which have become significantly important to both academics and practitioners over the past couple of decades.

This thesis deals mainly with internal fraud. In the first section, a definition of fraud is mentioned. The second section briefly describes the internal and external fraud and provides their basic structure. The third section deals with the reasons for committing fraud. The fourth section is concerned with the specific forms of internal fraud which come under the basic groups of corruption, misappropriation of assets and statements manipulation and other forms of fraud which may be between the internal and external fraud. The last section provides examples of large and small accounting examples relating to the internal fraudulent activities.

The aim of the research was to look at the motivations behind white-collar crime and, by means of the insights gained, allow businesses to achieve a better understanding of these motivations and the possible loopholes that exist with respect to white-collar crime. Empowered which such knowledge, businesses fraud mitigation polices and approaches are enhanced; which contribute towards sustained operations and increased shareholder value by reduce losses. Face-to-face interviews were held with 29 white-collar offenders imprisoned at the Johannesburg Medium Correctional Centre in Gauteng, South African. Data was collected from these interviews and grouped into themes that related to the research questions. An action plan was formulated to assist business in their fight to eliminate and reduce the impact of commercial crime. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This diploma thesis deals with the problems of insurance fraud in our society. The thesis is divided into several relatively separate sections. The theoretical part describes a basic characteristic, classification and origins of insurance fraud and it deals with a general description of perpetrators of fraudulent actions. An analysis of fraudulent actions in life and non-life insurance is carried out in the theoretical part of the diploma thesis. This work characterises the importance and the mutual relationship between detection and investigation of fraudulent actions. It also highlights the facts which aid and abet insurance fraud. The aim of the practical part of the diploma thesis was to carry out an analysis of various insurance fraud cases in the realm of motor insurance according to the subject, object and the most frequent variants of fraudulent actions and consequently create a profile of the perpetrator of insurance fraud on the basis of the evaluation of the analysis. The practical case study of client’s expedient behaviour enables us to look on detection of the particular insurance fraud. The end of the diploma thesis deals with recommendations for the measures which should be taken to fight insurance fraud.

E-commerce has seen a rapid growth the last two decades, making it easy for customers to shop wherever they are. The growth has also led to new kinds of fraudulent activities affecting the customers. To make customers feel safe while shopping online, companies like Resurs Bank are implementing different kinds of fraud filters to freeze transactions that are thought to be fraudulent. The latest type of fraud filter is based on machine learning. While this seems to be a promising technology, data and algorithms need to be tuned properly to the task at hand. This thesis project gives a proof of concept of realizing a machine learning based fraud filter for Resurs Bank. Based on a literature study, available data and explainability requirements, this work opts for a supervised learning approach based on Random Forests with a sliding window to overcome concept drift. The inherent class imbalance of the setting makes the area-under-the-receiver operating-curve a suitable metric. This approach provided promising results that a machine learning based fraud filter can add value to companies like Resurs Bank. An alternative approach on how to incorporate non-numerical features by using recurrent neural networks (RNN) was implemented and compared. The non-numerical feature was transformed by a pre-trained RNN-model to a numerical representation that reflects the features suspiciousness. This new numerical feature was then included in the Random Forest model and the result demonstrated that this approach can add valuable insight to the fraud detection field.

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.

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published_or_final_version / Community Medicine / Master / Master of Public Health