By: Margaret Karren

While attending the 2013 AICPA Not-for-Profit Industry Conference this past week in Washington D.C., I learned some interesting facts and statistics about employees committing fraud in the nonprofit sector.

• A typical fraud in a nonprofit organization is for $100,000.
• Billing fraud accounts for 24.9% of fraud cases. Billing schemes include unrecorded sales, understated sales and false discounts.
• Write-offs are a common way to cover up fraud. Make sure you have proper segregation of duties in this high risk area.
• Expense reimbursements are another high risk area, so make sure you compare your organization's credit card expenses against employee expense reports to check for double dipping. An example of double dipping would be if an employee submitted a detailed dinner receipt for reimbursement while also submitting the dinner expense on a corporate credit card statement. Without a close watch, both items could slip through for reimbursement.

Take precautions to prevent fraud in the work place. Proper internal controls, fair compensation and employee treatment, workplace perks, and appropriate monitoring all help deter fraud in the workplace.