When travel for business becomes fraudulent pleasure

Many organizations allow business-traveling employees to report certain expenses and receive reimbursement for these costs. Unfortunately, this can lead to expense reimbursement fraud. This fraud is a form of asset misappropriation in which an employee steals or misuses their organization’s resources. This scheme can consist of outright fabrication of expenses or inflation of actual expenses for things like airfare, lodging or gas mileage.

According to the 2016 ACFE Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, expense reimbursement fraud caused an estimated median loss of $40,000 for companies. This type of fraud is rarely discovered immediately when it occurs — the median time to discovery is approximately 24 months.

Some examples of reimbursement fraud might include the following: