In recent years, the accounting profession has faced increased scrutiny because of scandals involving management fraud (e.g., Enron, WorldCom). In response, Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) #99 has expanded auditors' responsibility for detecting fraud, requiring auditors to gather significantly more information in their assessment of fraud. In addition, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) will focus on fraud detection through their inspections of registered accounting firms. In light of the increased emphasis on auditors' responsibility for detecting fraud, public accounting firms face the challenge of improving their fraud detection process, including their assessment of management fraud risk. Decision aids are one way for auditors to improve their assessment of management fraud risk. In fact, several studies from the decision aid literature suggest that aids are useful tools for a variety of tasks, including fraud risk assessment. At the same time, another stream of the decision aid reliance literature, which looks at people's willingness to rely on decision aids, suggests that individuals tend to be reluctant to accept the output given by an aid. Thus, the primary focus of this paper is on uncovering factors that would encourage one to voluntarily use and rely upon a decision aid. Toward that end, 132 senior-level auditors participated in an experiment that examined how several factors (confidence, perceived usefulness, client size, and conformity pressure) affect decision aid usage and reliance. The results show that perceived usefulness and decision aid reliance are significantly related. Further, the results suggest that perceived usefulness affects reliance more than variables examined in prior studies (e.g., confidence). Finally, the results suggest that decision aid usage mediates the relationship between perceived usefulness and reliance. The results of the current study have important implications for research in both the information systems and decision aid reliance areas. First, the study shows that perceived usefulness, a significant construct from the technology acceptance model (TAM) literature, is also a significant factor in determining decision aid usage and reliance. Second, the study further delineates how certain factors affect decision aid reliance.

Microfinance institutions (MFIs) are an important tool of poverty reduction which has gained grounds over the years and grown rapidly given the services they provide. The rapid growth of the MFIs has had huge challenges on their regulatory framework which in turn has resulted in the prevalence of fraudulent cases. With the devasting effects of fraud on MFIs and the importance of MFIs in many economies this thesis aims to examine how the design and use of internal control impact fraud detection and prevention in MFIs. To achieve this aim, a qualitative study was conducted with a case study on eight MFIs in Cameroon. Primary data will be obtained from fourteen semi-structured interviews. Data will be analysed manually using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that internal control has a positive impact on fraud detection and prevention in MFIs by reducing fraud incentive, opportunity, rationalization, and capability. Further, findings revealed that the greatest causes of fraud in MFIs are poor remuneration, weak monitoring, and a poor internal control system. Therefore, for the purpose of future fraud prevention, MFIs should ensure to improve their remuneration schemes, improve1 their monitoring system and ensure regular internal control system updates in term of software and design. The study also, suggests further research on this topic in MFIs with a case study in other countries of the world. It will also be interesting for other researchers to explore how the aspect of capability as a key determinant of fraud can be reduced. This thesis contributes to academic literature as there is lack of studies on the impact of internal control on fraud detection and prevention in MFIs.

This diploma thesis deals with problems of insurance fraud in the Czech Republic. The thesis is decided into the several separate parts. The teoretical part describes characteristics of insuracne fraud itselfs, its classification, profile of fraud perpetor and reason of committing instance fraud at all. The next part describes detection of insurance fraud and the subsecvent procedure in investigating insurance fraud. The goal of practical part of diploma thesis is analysis of insurance fraud and questionnaire survey. There will be describe the prevetion of insurance fraud and in the end, there will be several specific cases of insurance fraud.

The lack of legitimate datasets on mobile money transactions toperform research on in the domain of fraud detection is a big prob-lem today in the scientic community. Part of the problem is theintrinsic private nature of mobile transactions, not much infor-mation can be exploited. This will leave the researchers with theburden of rst harnessing the dataset before performing the actualresearch on it. The dataset corresponds to the set of data in whichthe research is to be performed on. This thesis discusses a solutionto such a problem, namely the Paysim simulator. Paysim is a -nancial simulator that simulates mobile money transactions basedon an original dataset. We present a solution to ultimately yieldthe possibility to simulate mobile money transactions in such a waythat they become similar to the original dataset. The similarity orthe congruity will be measured by calculating the error-rate betweenthe synthetic data set and the original data set. With technologyframeworks such as "Agent Based" simulation techniques, and theapplication of mathematical statistics, it can be demonstrated thatthe synthetic data is as prudent as the original data set. The aimof this thesis is to demonstrate with statistical models that PaySimcan be used as a tool for the intents of nancial simulations.

Detta examensarbete undersöker riskerna med elektronisk identifiering, mer specifikt säkerhetsrisker kring enheten BankID i Sverige. Idag används BankID i stor utsträckning, men elektronisk identifiering kommer också med vissa risker när det gäller identitetsrelaterade brott. I Sverige var brottstypen som ökade mest det senaste året mätt i anmälda brott, bedrägerier som huvudsakligen begåtts genom informationsteknik. Arbetet syftar därför till att undersöka vilka säkerhetsrisker som finns med den elektroniska identifieringen BankID, och hur Polismyndigheten och Ekobrottsmyndigheten bekämpar brott på detta område. Resultatet visar att den största säkerhetsrisken med BankID är användare/kunder som kan luras. Gärningsmän använder olika metoder för att få tillgång till andra personer BankID. Vad gäller hur Polismyndigheten och Ekobrottsmyndigheten bekämpar brott riktade mot elektronisk identifiering är resultatet delvis bristfälligt på grund av att Ekobrottsmyndigheten inte är representerade. Utifrån polisens perspektiv så undersöker de bedrägeri avseende BankID så som de gör med alla andra brott, men brottet har generellt en lägre prioritet inom myndigheten. Polisen samarbetar med olika aktörer samt bidrar båda till att utveckla produktens säkerhet och informera kunderna om säkerhet och risker avseende BankID. / This thesis investigates the threats against electronical identification, more specifically the danger that comes with the device BankID in Sweden. Today BankID is widely used but electronical identification also comes with certain security risks regarding identity related crimes. In Sweden, the crime type which increased the most last year 2018 measured in reported crimes was fraud mainly committed through information technology. This thesis therefore aim to investigate what the safety risks are using electronical identification, such as BankID and how the police force and Swedish Economic Crime Authority combat cybercrimes in this area. The result show that the main security risk with BankID is the customers that can be deceived. Perpetrators use different methods to get access to another individuals BankID. Regarding how the police force and Swedish Economic Crime Authority combat crimes against electronical identification, the result is partly defective due to that the Swedish Economic Crime Authority not being represented in this thesis. However, from the police perspective, they investigate fraud regarding BankID as all other crimes but it has in general a lower priority within the authority. The police cooperate with different actors and help both with development of the product security and inform customers about safety and risks regarding BankID.

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

With the increased global use of online media platforms, there are more opportunities than ever to misuse those platforms or perpetrate fraud. One such fraud is within the music industry, where perpetrators create automated programs, streaming songs to generate revenue or increase popularity of an artist. With growing annual revenue of the digital music industry, there are significant financial incentives for perpetrators with fraud in mind. The focus of the study is extracting user behavioral patterns and utilising them to train and compare multiple supervised classification method to detect fraud.  The machine learning algorithms examined are Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines, Random Forest and Artificial Neural Networks. The study compares performance of these algorithms trained on imbalanced datasets carrying different fractions of fraud. The trained models are evaluated using the Precision Recall Area Under the Curve (PR AUC) and a F1-score. Results show that the algorithms achieve similar performance when trained on balanced and imbalanced datasets. It also shows that Random Forest outperforms the other methods for all datasets tested in this experiment. / Med den ökande användningen av strömmande media ökar också möjligheterna till missbruk av dessa platformar samt bedrägeri. Ett typiskt fall av bedrägeri är att använda automatiserade program för att strömma media, och därigenom generera intäkter samt att öka en artist popularitet. Med den växande ekonomin kring strömmande media växer också incitamentet till bedrägeriförsök. Denna studies fokus är att finna användarmönster och använda denna kunskap för att träna modeller som kan upptäcka bedrägeriförsök. The maskininlärningsalgoritmer som undersökts är Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines, Random Forest och Artificiella Neurala Nätverk. Denna studie jämför effektiviteten och precisionen av dessa algoritmer, som tränats på obalanserad data som innehåller olika procentandelar av bedrägeriförsök. Modellerna som genererats av de olika algoritmerna har sedan utvärderas med hjälp av Precision Recall Area Under the Curve (PR AUC) och F1-score. Resultaten av studien visar på liknande prestanda mellan modellerna som genererats av de utvärderade algoritmerna. Detta gäller både när de tränats på balanserad såväl som obalanserad data. Resultaten visar också att Random Forestbaserade modeller genererar bättre resultat för alla dataset som testats i detta experiment.

The central focus of this dissertation study is to understand the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the factors that contribute to increased risk of fraud in order to determine why fraud may occur despite the imposed regulation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The main premise of the study tests the application of the fraud triangle framework constructs to publicly traded restaurant companies during the time period of 2002-2014, using proxy variables defined through literature. Essentially, the study seeks to identify the factors that may provide the optimal criteria to engage in fraudulent or opportunistic behavior. The fraud triangle theoretical framework is comprised of the constructs of pressure, opportunity and rationalization, and has mostly been utilized by external auditors to assess the fraud risk of various companies. It has never been applied to the restaurant industry, and the proxy variables selected have never before been tested in a comprehensive model. Thus, a major contribution of this study may enable executive managers to assess the fraud triangle conditions according to the model in order to afford conclusions regarding increased risk of fraud. The study first hypothesized that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has had a significant impact on detecting increased risk of fraud for publicly traded restaurant companies. Additionally, the study controlled for and tested the proxy variables of the fraud triangle constructs to determine if any of the variables had a significant impact on detecting increased risk of fraud for publicly traded restaurant companies. The variables tested included company size, debt, employee turnover, organizational structure, international sales growth, executive stock compensation, return on assets, the Recession, and macro-economic factors of interest, inflation, and unemployment rates. The research study adopted an exploratory research design using the case of publicly traded United States restaurant companies in order to provide a better understanding of the characteristics that may contribute to increased fraud risk. The study assumed a binary distribution of the dependent variable, increased fraud risk, measured by the incidence of a reported internal control deficiency over the testable time period. Specifically, the study employed a probit model to estimate the probability that an entity or company will be at an increased risk of fraud based on the independent variables that support and are linked to the fraud triangle framework. Additionally, the model assumes equal weight to the variables of the fraud triangle framework. Through use of the probit model, the major findings of the study were as follows: First, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act does have a significant impact on highlighting areas of increased fraud risk for publicly traded restaurant companies. Second, for the total population of restaurant companies, only the Recession, interest rates, inflation rates and unemployment rates are significant indicators of increased fraud risk. None of the internal variables were significant. However, once the data was segmented by type of restaurant, the results revealed significance of both internal and external variables. These results imply a couple of theoretical notions: first, that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is an effective means for detecting risk of fraud for publicly traded restaurant companies when considering variables that support the fraud triangle; second, that the fraud triangle is contextual when applied to the restaurant industry because only the variables that are outside of managements control were significant. Finally, from a managerial perspective, the study provides evidence that macro-economic conditions that might affect consumer demand may increase the risk of fraud for publicly traded restaurant companies.

Regulation Crowdfunding, enacted in May 2016, is intended to facilitate capital formation in startups and small businesses funded primarily by small investors (Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 2016b). This dissertation investigates (1) the risk of fraud in equity crowdfunding offerings and (2) whether investors respond to fraud signals by selecting (rejecting) offers with low (high) fraud risk. Because equity crowdfunding is quite new, no frauds have yet been identified. Therefore, I employ a predictive analytics tool, Benford’s Law, to assess the fraud risk of the offering. I select observable indicators to represent the Fraud Triangle dimensions—incentives, opportunities and rationalization—and test if they predict fraud risk. I also compare offer funding outcomes to my fraud risk assessments to identify if investors’ selections consider fraud risk appropriately. The relaxed auditor assurance and disclosure requirements attracts both honest and dishonest founders, but I find that the risk of fraud is higher in equity crowdfunding offers than in public offerings as reported by other studies. I find that there are several individual fraud indicators and models that explain fraud risk, but these do not predict whether the offer is funded or not (funding outcomes) or the amount that is raised if funded. This dissertation is the first to apply Benford’s Law to equity crowdfunding offers and map fraud attributes to fraud risk and funding outcomes. My dissertation can inform investors, issuers, regulators, intermediaries and practitioners of the high risk of fraud in equity crowdfunding offerings and of several noteworthy fraud indicators. / Business Administration/Accounting

The study examines how an individual's level of fraud detection proficiency (an individual possessing formal fraud education or training, informal fraud training, fraud task-specific experience, and /or fraud-related certifications) impacts their performance on fraud risk assessments and modification of audit plans. Further, it explores which of the fraud detection proficiency dimensions are valuable for auditors in situations of high and low levels of fraud risk and how these characteristics interact with professional skepticism. This, as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of the procedures selected, are addressed using a survey-based scenario where one case is embedded with a financial statement fraud and the other is not. Tobit and ordered logit regression models are used to evaluate a sample of 40 auditors and 10 forensic professionals with varying levels of fraud-related experiences, education, training, and certifications against a benchmark panel. Results demonstrate fraud certifications are effective in fraud risk assessments, are not effective in audit plan modifications, and on average those individuals tend to over-audit. In addition, fraud-related task-specific experience improves audit plan modification effectiveness. Third, including professional skepticism as an interaction is more reflective of the variable's nature, with results supporting interactions with fraud certifications and informal fraud training in the fraud risk assessment model and formal fraud training in the audit plan modifications model. Finally, individuals of higher rank, in addition to those with fraud certifications, are more likely to over-audit, while individuals in the no fraud scenario are more likely to under-audit. This study contributes to the academic literature with regard to a subset of the FJDM proposed by Hammersley (2011) validating professional skepticism as an integral variable in the model, particularly as an interaction variable and with regard to the impacts of fraud certifications and fraud-related task-specific experience. The study also contributes by providing evidence, which indicate lower fraud risk situations are prone to assessing fraud risk less effectively and under-auditing. Finally, this study also contributes a new measure for direct fraud-related experience, which captures more details regarding applicable task-specific experiences. / Ph. D.