What a typical office embezzler looks like

Employee fraud is on the rise in organisations, and ironically, a majority of such crimes are being committed by trusted employees themselves.

And interestingly, the typical embezzler is a senior female employee with long tenure at their place of work.

That was the key finding of a new report by Hiscox, which looked at employee theft cases that were active in the U.S. federal courts in 2014.

It highlighted that women represented more than 60% of employee perpetrators, with a median age of 50 and above.

In fact, over half of all employee theft schemes (53%) were perpetrated by employees in senior roles within the organisation, with those stakeholders engaging in schemes with a median loss of $313,9395.

"While companies often staff audit teams with employees from the accounting and finance function, our research shows that fraudsters in these positions accounted for more than 40% of the schemes surveyed," the report stated.

It added companies of all sizes and industries should be more careful in conducting background screening checks and conduct comprehensive checks during audits.

This is especially because it found that embezzlement wasn't just an issue for big corporations or the financial services industry.

In fact, according to the report, 80% of the victimised businesses had fewer than 100 employees.

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