My last 13 posts have been specific tips designed to help you do a better job preventing fraud at your company. My hope is that by calling your attention to the variety of ways that people commit fraud and by sharing these anecdotes you’ll be proactive in putting in place checks and balances and sticking to the kind of no-nonsense fraud prevention policies that keep businesses healthy and safe.

Let this post serve as a reference for each of the 13 Fraud Prevention Tips I’ve offered, and please feel free to add your own.

1. If Someone Commits Fraud, Have Them Thrown in Jail

2. Leverage the Value of an Informal Fraud Policy

3. Fraud Prevention Tip: Keep Your Security Room Locked

4. Always Have Someone Double Check the Payroll

5. Change the Standard by Which You Check Your Transactions

6. Don’t Rehire People Who Steal From You – Seriously

7. Focus on Checks and Balances that are Rechecked and Rebalanced

8. Take All Shortages Seriously

9. Always Poke Around Your Books

10. Regularly Monitor and Review Monetary Trends

11. Match Your Purchase Orders Against Your Invoices Before Putting the Invoices in Your System

12. Think About the Financial Impact of Rare Events on Your Business

13. Trust Your Instincts

Someone asked me why I did so many posts on Fraud Prevention that they ran right out of March – Fraud Prevention Month – and all the way to the end of April. As I mentioned in my very first post about fraud this year, preventing fraud is a year-round process. You need to be vigilant all the time, building a system that is internally monitored – and that monitors the monitors.

Please let me know what your fraud stories are, what tips you’d add to my list and how you prevent fraud.