A new study has painted a picture of the typical Canadian workplace fraudster: Male, middle-aged, with the means and motive to steal small amounts of money or other assets, and most likely working in an operations, accounting or procurement position.
The KPMG study surveyed 72 senior executives from across Canada with two-thirds of respondents coming from B.C., Alberta and Ontario. A quarter of the participating respondents worked at companies with revenues of more than $1 billion, another quarter worked at companies with revenues of less than $100 million.
James Hunter, national leader for KPMG's forensic practice, said the survey results show that workplace fraud is a chronic problem in Canada, commonly involving smaller amounts of money stolen by people from across the corporate spectrum.
"It's happening all the time," Hunter told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday. "You don't hear about it too much because most of the frauds do not involve a great amount of money, but it's everywhere."
According to the survey, nearly three-quarters of frauds were carried out by men, with 69 per cent of these fraudsters falling between the ages of 30 and 49.
The survey concluded that this "prime age" range for fraudsters was the result of such individuals having enough experience to know how to plan a fraud, combined with being in a time of life when "financial concerns or needs" are greatest for them.
Hunter said these fraudsters typically come from a variety of corporate positions.
"It's right across the spectrum from the people at junior levels right up to the most senior people in the organization," Hunter said.
The survey found that 45 per cent of fraudsters work in operations, 14 per cent in accounting, and seven per cent in procurement groups within their company.
Hunter said most workplace frauds are small in scale and pale in comparison to scams on the scale of a Bernard Madoff-like operation.
"About 70 per cent of them are under $100,000 a year, which for most corporations is just a drop in the bucket," Hunter said.
Often times, fraudsters fudge their expense accounts, or they attempt to steal cash or other assets, he said. Financial need, opportunity and greed are the main motivating factors.
When employees believe one of their colleagues is involved in fraud, they should report it, Hunter said. The best way to do that is through a whistleblower line that allows them to report suspected wrongdoings confidentially.
"The best thing you can do, the most powerful thing you can do, is to speak up and corporations that have a whistleblower line really facilitate that," he said.
Whistleblower lines are mandatory for Canada's publicly traded companies, Hunter said, though they are not mandatory for private companies.
"For public companies in Canada, for the largest corporations, it's the law: They have to have a whistleblower line, they have to have a mechanism to allow employees to speak up when they see, or if they suspect, wrongdoing," he said.
