Ghost employees and other payroll scams are trouble for employers. They may be just as fictional as the paranormal activities in your favorite scary book or movie, but if you have ghost employees on your payroll, you have fraud. And if you have fraud, you have potentially significant financial losses. Anatomy of a scheme Ghost employee schemes usually are perpetrated by employees who have easy access to payroll records. If your company’s internal controls are loose enough to be exploited, a greedy or disgruntled staffer could invent an employee, put this “person” on the payroll and direct deposit paychecks to a bank account in the ghost’s name. It may seem like it would be easier to hide ghost employees in large companies. In fact, small businesses, where a...