What’s New: In Brief (March 20, 2009)

The Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) is warning consumers of an insurance fraud scheme that involves the misappropriation of premiums.
There have been situations in which people have purported to be insurer representatives and misappropriated premiums for their own personal gain, the AMF says in a release.
“These scammers pocketed the money without the consumer’s knowledge and no contract was issued by the insurer. Consumers who believed they held a valid contract discovered the fraud after filing a claim with the insurer.”

Seventy-five per cent of corporate fraudsters in Canada are men who typically worked for their employer between three and five years, a KPMG study found.
In Profile of a Canadian Fraudster, senior executives across Canada and from a wide range of industries were polled by KPMG about experiences related to fraud.
The report revealed that 69% of fraud cases were internal jobs, 20% external and 11% involved both insiders and outsiders. Also, 69% of fraudsters were between the ages of 30 and 49.
Individuals below the level of management carried out 62% of frauds, while senior management carried out 22%, researchers found.
The three main factors reported as leading to fraud were personal need (28%), opportunity (19%) and greed (14%).