The Psychology and Sociology of Fraud: Integrating the Behavioral Sciences Component Into Fraud and Forensic Accounting Curricula

The 2008 Report to the Nation issued by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners indicated that US organizations lose almost 7 percent of their revenue to fraud, and that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)-based annual fraud estimate for the United States alone was $994 billion (ACFE, 2008). Of course, we all now recognize that the scourge of fraud is a global phenomenon that extends far beyond the borders of the US However, the study of white collar crime has hitherto been relatively sparse because ‘‘few areas of criminological investigation are plagued [with such] intractable controversies [including] conceptual ambiguities, distinctions, and taxonomies’’(Shover 1998). Nevertheless, future business professionals, and especially accounting majors, must have a keen understanding of the new 21st century era of governance and accountability spawned by the post-Enron/WorldCom environment