Introduction to Travel Claim Fraud

Why Should You Attend:

In its 2012 Report to the Nations, The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners highlighted some frightening statistics - A typical organization loses 5% of its revenues to fraud each year.

Occupational fraud can be a significant threat to organizations, especially small businesses. Nearly half of victim organizations do not recover any losses that they suffer due to fraud. Organizations that implement anti-fraud controls experience considerably lower losses and time-to-detection than organizations lacking these controls.

This webinar will highlight actual examples of travel fraud that happen in organizations and focus on internal controls that you can have in place to prevent fraud related to travel and subsistence claims. The training will also include a case-study demonstration of how you can prevent travel claims fraud.

Areas Covered in the Seminar:

• What is Fraud?
• Legal and regulatory background.
• Actual examples of travel fraud.
• Internal controls against expense fraud.
• Development and contents of an ideal travel policy.
• Travel Claim Case study.

Who Will Benefit:

• Human Resources
• Financial Officers
• Board Members
• Internal Auditors
• External Auditors
• Operational Risk Managers
• Staff with roles and responsibilities in checking travel claims in administrative departments, businesses and central departments.

Instructor Profile:

Paul Gostelow, is an experienced Financial Manager with a proven track record of success within manufacturing, B2B, IT, telecommunications, entertainment, commercial and not for profit market sectors. He has a Legal Degree from the University of Birmingham, UK and is a qualified Chartered Accountant. He worked for many years for members of the “Big Four”, mainly in Eastern Europe and Italy. Since 2004 he has run his own consultancy practice specializing in:

• Interim financial management
• Implementation of s302 and s404 Sarbanes-Oxley compliance in Europe for quoted Companies
• Internal audit projects
• Fraud risk assessments and remediation

Topic Background:

A typical organization loses 5% of its revenues to fraud each year. Applied to the estimated 2011 Gross World Product, this figure translates to a potential projected global fraud loss of more than $3.5 trillion. The median loss caused by the occupational fraud cases in a study by ACFE was $140,000. More than one-fifth of these cases caused losses of at least $1 million.

Travel fraud is categorized as a fictitious expense scheme by the ACFE. Travel fraud is one of the most common forms of fictitious expense schemes. Instead of overstating a real business expense, as many fraudsters do, they invent travel activities and submit completely false expense claims. Some organizations more often than not pay these false claims because they have inadequate internal controls to detect them. These organizations pay for unauthorized business purposes, which the fraudsters then use for personal benefit.

Travel expenses are high-risk transactions because of the potential for employees to manipulate actions on the travel expense claims they submit. Employees might take unauthorized trips for personal benefit or make claims for travel expenses that infringe the organizations' policies and procedures, such as expenses for alcohol and personal amenities when prohibited. Organizations should include travel expense reporting policies and procedures in their employee training programs.

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