Why a Forensic Accountant
What Does Quinn Forensics Bring to the Table?
Interesting Statistics About Fraud
Why a Forensic Accountant
The traditional accounting firms offer the usual services—financial statement audits, reviews, and compilations and tax return preparation. Many of these firms may step outside their normal services and also provide estate and tax planning or wealth management. These firms can handle the majority of the accounting or tax related issues that confront their clients. However, there are situations where the company’s current external accountants are conflicted out of the engagement because of their involvement in the annual audit or where specific expertise is needed and the traditional accountants are lacking in the necessary skills. It is at these times that Quinn Forensics can prove invaluable. top
What Does Quinn Forensics Bring to the Table?
The majority of fraudulent activities occur under the watch of the company’s normal auditors. In less than 10% of the time were external auditors able to detect fraud at their clients. Over 60% of all frauds were discovered either by tip (usually anonymously) or by accident. Consequently, it is often inappropriate to turn to the external auditors when fraud is detected.
Hugh Quinn, the Principal at Quinn Forensics, has over twenty-seven years of financial and legal experience. He is both a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). He also has his Juris Doctorate and practiced as a litigator for almost a decade. The combination of his experience, education, and training is unique. His accounting insight has proven invaluable to his clients. top
Interesting Statistics About Fraud
- The typical organization loses 7% of its annual revenues to fraudulent activity. If this rate were applied to the U.S. gross domestic product, the loss would be almost $1 trillion in 2008.
- Small businesses are especially vulnerable to fraud with the median loss being $200,000 —higher than the median loss in any other category including the largest organizations.
- Twenty-nine percent of frauds were committed by persons in the accounting department while 18% were committed by executives or upper management.
- Frauds committed by executives had a median loss of $835,000.
- Only 7% of fraud perpetrators had prior convictions.
- Almost two-thirds of all fraud schemes were done by a single perpetrator.
- When the scheme involved multiple perpetrators, the median loss was over four times higher than the amount lost in schemes involving single perpetrators.
- More than half of all frauds involved a person over the age of 40.
- Less than fifteen percent of frauds were committed by a fraudster under the age of 30.
- Generally, there was a direct correlation between the age of the perpetrator and the amount of the fraud.
a. The loss increased with the age of the fraudster.
b.The median loss from schemes done by people in their 50s was approximately $500,000 – twice as high as any age bracket below them. - 52% of the perpetrators of fraudulent schemes were committed by individuals that had been with their organization for more than five years.
- Over half of all perpetrators had some college education.
- About one-third of all perpetrators were high school graduates with no additional formal education.
