The Elephant in the COVID-19 Room

It was only a matter of time.

I should have known something was amiss when over the course of the past two weeks I received no less than five phishing emails purportedly from such august institutions as Microsoft, Bank of America and Verizon asking me to re-enter personal information – the result of internal software glitches that somehow lost that protected data. Or so they claimed.

It was hard to keep from even mild chuckling when I noticed that the Microsoft address was a Gmail account. Meanwhile the one from Bank of America was in fuzzy black and white with Bank spelled “Banc.”

Seriously.

Which sort of ties into today’s missive, the spike in fraud since the pandemic.

Recently, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners released a report that said 77 percent of the organization’s over 2,000 members who responded to the survey indicated that they have witnessed an increase in fraud since the outbreak of COVID-19. No surprise there.

And perhaps more disturbing is that 92 percent predicted a steady increase in malfeasance over the next 12 months.

Predictably the largest rise was insurance fraud (12 percent from the last report) followed by bank and loan fraud, identity theft and employee embezzlement. The area where most ACFE members project the largest growth is cyber fraud where over 90 percent indicated a rise over the next year.

With the number of remote workers increasing exponentially as a result of the pandemic, the organization said that trend can usher in a spike in fraud because employees are away from their direct reports and upper management with many able to gain access to company internal systems 24/7.

With so many small businesses fighting for survival, it’s also not surprising that management may push the envelope in ways that they normally would not with regard to risk assessment and tolerance or on completing financial statements.

Closer to home, there was an article in my local newspaper that a nearby medical supply company is currently under indictment for fraudulent billing stemming from COVID-19 testing. And I am fairly certain that the number of companies running afoul of the law during the pandemic will not stop at one before it’s all over.

And you can “Banc” on that.

Sorry, just couldn’t resist.