By Dorothy Riggs, CFE Reportedly, the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel project tallied 3 million consumer complaints received in 2016.   Regarding consumer fraud, identity theft has lost its #1 position.   Impostor fraud has taken the lead.   Last year victims lost $744.5 million collectively to impostor fraud schemes. What is Impostor Fraud? Impostor fraud involves fraudsters impersonating someone else in order to carry out a fraud scheme.   They often contact consumers pretending to be family members, law enforcement, representatives of government agencies, bill collectors and so on.

Bible scripture Malachi 3:8 asks, “Will a man rob God?” The answer is a resounding, YES.  Throughout my lifetime I’ve heard many ministers deliver sermons using Malachi 3:8 as the text for their messages.   However, their sermons all referenced robbing God by means of not paying tithes and offerings.   However, in this day and age neglecting to pay tithes and offerings aren’t the only methods of robbery occurring in houses of God. From a fraud examiner’s point of view another real issue is protecting donations from internal and external thieves. Internal Fraud Cases One would hope that houses of worship would be the last places criminals would defraud.   Unfortunately, that hope would be dashed. The same types of fraud that affect secular entities are also present in religious organizations. Worship centers are affected by fraud schemes more often that we know and in many instances are committed by those least expected, trusted members a...