Of all the forms of white-collar crime, procurement fraud is probably the least visible yet the most costly. That’s largely because it’s a hidden byproduct of seemingly legitimate transactions, often involving millions of dollars, between a business and supposedly legitimate vendors. What’s more, the organizations victimized by procurement fraud often don’t report it and choose to settle privately with the alleged culprits.
Typically, procurement fraud involves an employee working with an outside vendor to defraud his employer through bogus or inflated invoices, services and products not delivered, work never done, or contract manipulation. In exchange for letting the vendor shortchange the ...