It is surely no big deal to steal a ballpoint pen from the office stationery cupboard, or some paper. But what about a mug, some furniture, a laptop? Many Americans apparently think it is fine to steal almost anything you can from work, a new report has found.
The study, by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), found that “non cash” property theft – which spans everything from notebooks to Nespresso machines to personal data – by employees has almost doubled in the US in recent years from 11% of occupational fraud cases in 2002 to 21% in 2018 (a trend also reflected globally). And they predict the rate of fraud will continue to rise.
According to the anti-fraud organization workers ranging from “entry-level employees to C-suite executives” are all at it, with corporate fraud costing businesses globally more than $7bn in losses between January 2016 and October 2017 alone.
Jacob Parks, one of the authors of the ACFE report and associate general counsel at the organization, points to the changing nature of workplace fraud to explain the rise.
