How to Investigate Waste & Abuse in Financial Services

Fraud is a criminal act that affects millions of people each year. It’s a criminal act that’s committed for financial or personal gain. There has been quite a few high-profile fraud cases in the past 10 years. Fraud jeopardizes the individual and their business by taking away valuable resources that helps the business thrive. However, there are many services that suffer waste and abuse that can limit aid to many people. The goal is to oversee these types of programs to stop people from abusing the system. A fraud investigation service professional can stop abuse of financial and business practices.

How to Spot Fraud

Scammers are becoming increasingly clever and more people are being duped. There’s acts of felony and misdemeanor fraud. However, when fraud leads to millions of dollars being stolen, it’s called embezzlement. In fact, the internet has opened the door for other fraud cases. When you start to notice discrepancies with your finances there’s a chance of suspected fraud involved. A pattern of fraud can quickly jeopardize your business. Protect yourself from becoming a victim of fraud by hiring a financial overseer to maintain your financial accounts or inventory.

Fraud can also cause a company to go out of business. Unfortunately, when fraud occurs in the millions, it can hurt the business owner, people working for the company, and shareholders. For example, the fraud case that involved financial investor, Bernie Madoff, hurt hundreds of people and left many people out of their retirement savings. What’s worst; they weren’t able to recover their funds. However, he’s doing federal time and will spend the rest of his life in prison. He created a scam that would later pillage several people out of their money. Remember, a fraudster will attack you in several different ways to defraud you out of your money or resources.

How Can a Scam Occur

Someone that’s attempting to scam or defraud you can be knocking on your front door, calling on the phone, or scam you over the internet. Anyone can become a victim of fraud. You may not see a case of fraud coming. However, when government entities are defrauded there can be huge penalties. For example, the IRS imposes strict penalties for fraud. The same is true with government services including food stamps. Both agencies have penalties that include jail time or fraud. In some cases, a person being accused of fraud may be penalized with both.

Law enforcement and the courts go after several acts of fraud each year. There’s also medical fraud that’s perpetrated by many medical practitioners. Medical fraud can also be committed by an individual. Moreover, online medical fraud is on the rise. Ad fraud has also caused people to lose over $5.1 billion dollars in damages. The government is working diligently to stop ad fraud from occurring. If you’re a victim of fraud, you should report it to the police as soon as possible. You can also report business fraud anonymously on a hotline provided by the business or governmental entity.