Strength Through Numbers: Building Up an Army of Fraud Fighters
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To prevent fraud within your organization, you will need to build an army of fraud fighters. This was the general message Mary Breslin, CFE, CIA, ACA conveyed in her educational session at the 34th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference, titled “Fraud Awareness 2.0: An Army of Fraud Fighters.”
So, why does an army need to be established? According to Breslin, most people are not 100% clear on what fraud is and those people need some help learning about fraud through examples. Many people don’t know how to differentiate waste and abuse from fraud, so that’s where we can come in and provide a little nudge. (Nudge was a word that came up a lot in the 75-minute session, but more on that later.)
Breslin says there are some people who are opposed to establishing a fraud training program within their organization. There are three excuses that are commonly brought up and some rebuttals Breslin offered:
“I’ve never had / needed fraud training.”
“It will teach people how to commit fraud.” – Breslin admitted that, yes, that is a possibility, but she says more than 95% of people will not be committing fraud. Instead, far more people will become fraud fighters who can then detect frauds committed by the 5%.
“We can’t afford it.” – If cost is a concern, Breslin says you can do messaging campaigns through Microsoft Teams, Slack, email, text and IM.
Breslin then brought up the nudge theory when it comes to giving fraud training. A nudge is a subtle and indirect way of influencing. Nudges work through positive reinforcement, and most of the time, people don’t even realize a nudge is happening because it’s in the subconscious. Breslin said if you really want to reach people, aim for their subconscious.
Breslin says nudges are reminders and prompts and can be used to increase transparency. Think about the order of food offerings on a school lunch line (healthier food at the beginning of the line to influence children to make healthier choices) and tip screens that try to suggest how much you should shell out for gratuities – those are nudges.
Here are Breslin’s tips on how to spread a message effectively:
Keep it short.
Keep it simple.
Get to the point.
Make it memorable with humor or visuals.
If you’re not the creative type, Breslin recommends going the ChatGPT route. But she cautioned the audience not to rely heavily on the technology. “ChatGPT is only as good as its user,” and can produce some duds.
To make learning easier, Breslin recommended short videos to introduce new concepts and provide refreshers. To prove just how quick and easy it is to make a short video, Breslin showed two short fraud training videos she created on her own. She says you should use a call to action within about every five lines of content to explain what needs to be accomplished.
If you absolutely do not have any time to produce fraud-fighting resources, Breslin recommends using resources already created by the government. As Breslin says, “We sometimes make things more complicated than they need to be.”
