Asset misappropriation typologies explained
Launch library · evergreen read
Asset misappropriation covers a broad category of schemes in which someone with legitimate access to an organisation's resources diverts them for personal benefit, ranging from simple cash theft through to more elaborate schemes involving falsified expense claims or misused company property. It remains one of the more common forms of internal fraud.
Cash schemes tend to be the simplest and often the easiest to detect through reconciliation, while non-cash schemes, such as misusing company equipment or diverting inventory, can be harder to notice because the loss is less immediately visible on a financial statement. Expense fraud sits somewhere between the two in typical detection difficulty.
Because these schemes usually start small, regular reconciliation and unpredictable spot checks tend to be more effective than occasional large audits, since a person testing the boundaries of what they can get away with is often deterred earliest by the sense that someone might genuinely be checking at any time.