Why Companies Aren't That Worried About Expense Fraud

In the U.S., travel and expense fraud has been in the news lately due to a variety of scandals featuring government leaders traveling around the world in secret with taxpayer money. On the corporate level, however, most expense fraud goes undetected due to the small dollar amounts involved when employees decide they deserve a few extra bucks. Research from expense technology provider Chrome River found expense fraud costs U.S. companies $1.9 billion each year. Mid-level employees are the most frequent offenders, particularly men under the age of 44. The average amount employees admitted to stealing was between $100 and $499 annually, and those who got caught said they usually received a warning instead of more severe consequences. "The fascinating human element of this is that usually the amount of money that people are stealing through expense fraud is small, but the risk they are taking for their personal lives and career is very large," said Alan Rich, CEO of Chrome River. "I had one come up this week where a company noticed on our system that the amount on a receipt didn't match the data that came in from one of the suppliers like Uber or Lyft. Our support people were thinking there was a bug, but it turned out that the user had used Photoshop and changed the amount on the receipt. It was for