Fraud tends to flourish during periods of prosperity. The reason is simple: When companies experience fast-growing revenues and rising net profits, they may lack a strong incentive to divert resources to preventing and detecting fraud. Fraud schemes can go undetected for months, even years. Furthermore, the sheer volume of legitimate transactions during thriving economic times makes it harder to detect fraudulent transactions. Normally, an economic slowdown correlates with increased fraud detection. But the COVID-19 pandemic has upended normal expectations. Companies may need to find new methods of unmasking fraud. Fraud continues … and even grows With millions of employees working from their homes, there are fewer people in the office to notice and report irregularities. And many managers are too distracted with crisis-related activities to perform the proper...
