Embezzlement: $4.5M was the biggest loss in 2009
On the Money From the June 11, 2010 print edition In January, Marquet International Ltd. of Boston – a corporate investigations, due diligence and litigation consulting firm – released its annual Report on Embezzlement. The report, which talks about actions taken against U.S. companies – estimated to be in the nine-figure range – revealed that the average loss was more than $1 million and the median loss was $386,500. More than 60 percent of the incidents involved women. However, male perpetrators embezzled nearly twice as much as females. Nearly 25 percent of all losses occurred in financial institutions, and two-thirds of the incidents were committed by employees who held finance and accounting positions. Embezzlement schemes usually last about four years. Marquet examined 415 major embezzlement cases during 2009. That means there was a major embezzlement case in the news daily. The largest embezzlement case of 2009 happened at Koss Corp., a premier designer of stereophonic headphones, based in Milwaukee. The perpetrator allegedly used interstate wire communications to defraud Koss of...
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