A common thread I come up against in my work with small businesses and cooperatives is that my clients believe their companies are “too small” to be a victim of employee theft — or that their relationships with staff are “too tight” for anyone to do such a thing. However, and unfortunately, we see fraud committed just as, if not more frequently, at small businesses as we do large ones — often due to a lack of internal controls combined with the need for each employee and owner to wear many hats simultaneously (preventing division of labor and cross-checks that might otherwise exist).

In this upcoming National Society of Accountants for Cooperatives Co-op Learning Network webinar, Steve Dawson of the Dawson Forensic Group will explore first-person explanations of the why and how a fraud was committed, to help us all design appropriate internal controls to prevent these situations.

The majority of internal fraud is perpetrated by “truly decent people”, not evil people… and we all have decent people working at our cooperatives. Based on real interviews with “truly decent people” that have committed fraud, this session provides an eye-opening glimpse into the thought processes that can occur in the mind of the potential perpetrator from the identification of the “need”, to the devising of a “scheme”, to the “perpetration” of fraud. Most internal controls deal with dual authorizations and the like. However, armed with the knowledge of what goes on in the mind of the perpetrator, this session provides information regarding the implementation of specific cost-effective controls that actually speak to the mind of the perpetrator.

Register here: NSAC Cooperative Learning Network – The Golden Egg of Internal Fraud Prevention