Meet Chris Marquet on September 18th at the ACFE Chicago Event Presenting the Keynote Address on the "Marquet Report on Embezzlement"

Chris Marquet will be delivering the keynote speech at the ACFE's Chicago Chapter meeting on September 18th.  The event will be held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago at 230 South Lasalle Street in Chicago, commencing at 11:30, including a luncheon.  It is worth 2 CPE credit hours for CFEs.  For more information and registration, go to their web site: http://www.acfechicago.org/Chicago_Chapter_Current_Events or email them at acfechicago@gmail.com.  It should be a fun event for those of you in the greater Chicago area.

Study: Montana 4th Highest State for Embezzlement Losses

From the Missoulian on 1/2/2015:

Montana’s businesses, nonprofits, government entities and other organizations had the fourth-highest risk in the nation for suffering major losses due to embezzlement in 2013, according to a newly released annual study.

Vermont topped the list, announced by Marquet International, an independent investigative, litigation support and security consulting firm based in Massachusetts that has compiled the study of major embezzlement cases in the United States for six years now.

Vermont and Montana – along with Florida, Missouri and Virginia – have been the five states most frequently named as being at the highest risk for major embezzlement cases during those six years.

“Vermont and Montana are similar in two respects, although they’re vastly different in geographical size,” Christopher Marquet, founder and CEO of Marquet International, said Wednesday in a telephone interview.

“Both are sparsely populated,” he explained, “and both have a preponderance of small businesses. By definition, smaller businesses are at higher risk for being embezzled from because their financial controls may not be as robust as larger businesses, and they often rely on a single person to handle the books. These people have often been with the business for years and years, and they are trusted implicitly.”

Beyond that, “it’s unclear why some states are more victimized than others,” Marquet said, “because the states at highest risk do not always have small populations.”

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Read the whole story here.

Download the report here.

The 2013 Marquet Report on Embezzlement Has Been Released

The long overdue 2013 Marquet Report on Embezzlement has finally been released.  A huge amount of effort went into getting this report completed.  The report is chock-a-block with information, statistics and analysis.  We trust that it adds to the knowledgebase around the issue of employee theft.

 Some interesting findings in the 2013 report include:

• 2013 highest rate of employee theft in 6 years of publishing this report;
• Vermont tops list of highest risk states for 2013; DC, WV, MT & SD follow Vermont, respectively;
• Financial institutions, government entities and non-profits hardest hit;
• Gambling addiction seen as a factor;
• Credit Unions continue to be frequent victims; and,
• Forged/unauthorized checks most common scheme employed by embezzlers.

We must thank Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope, associate professor at the School of Accountancy and MIS at DePaul University, along with her graduate-level forensic accounting class, Principles of Forensic Accounting.  Dr. Pope and her 40+ graduate students worked tirelessly this past semester to help us gather the data necessary to publish The 2013 Marquet Report on Embezzlement.  Without Dr. Pope and her students’ assistance, we may not have been able to produce this year’s report.  Dr. Pope, an expert in white collar fraud in her own right, is the creator of the award winning educational white-collar crime documentary Crossing the Line: Ordinary People Committing Extraordinary Crime and the upcoming documentary All the Queen’s Horses which chronicles the major embezzlement case involving Rita Crundwell and the town of Dixon, Illinois.  I recommend everyone check these out.

Go to http://www.marquetinternational.com/reports.htm and register for access to this report and all of our other white papers, including the prior Marquet Embezzlement Reports or e-mail us at info@marquetinternational.com.    We encourage feedback, comments, questions, constructive criticisms and suggestions.