Billing Fraud Ranks as Top Corporate Crime Among Large U.S. Entities as AI Concerns Mount for Risk Managers

A QBE Insurance survey finds 80% of large U.S. firms hit by employee fraud, with billing schemes and AI-driven deepfakes topping the list of concerns.

By: AXL Media

Published: Mar 4, 2026, 7:17 AM EST

Source: The information in this article was sourced from Insurance Business Mag

Prevalence of Management-Level Misconduct

In a comprehensive study of 200 risk managers at U.S. firms with annual revenues exceeding 500 million dollars, QBE Insurance found a high frequency of internal criminal activity. The survey indicates that eight in 10 organizations dealt with employee theft, fraud, or embezzlement within the last 12 months. Perhaps most significant is the seniority of the perpetrators; more than three-quarters of recent fraud incidents involved individuals at a manager level or higher. This trend aligns with data from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), which suggests that the financial damage caused by executives is nearly eight times greater than that of lower-level staff.

Billing Fraud and the Complexity of Detection

Billing fraud has solidified its position as the primary method of internal theft, cited by 36% of survey respondents over the last three years. These schemes typically exploit accounts payable pipelines, making them notoriously difficult to uncover, especially when invoices are for intangible services rather than physical inventory. Process automation experts from MHC Automation have noted that without physical goods to cross-check, staff processing high volumes of monthly payments rarely have the capacity to identify anomalies. Other significant threats reported include payment and check fraud (23%), payroll fraud (19%), and combined cash or non-cash theft (23%).

The Financial Toll on Large Organizations

The economic impact of occupational fraud is staggering for large-scale enterprises. According to the ACFE’s 2024 Report to the Nations, the typical organization loses approximately 5% of its annual revenue to fraud. For a company at the survey's minimum threshold of 500 million dollars in revenue, this represents an estimated annual exposure of 25 million dollars. While the median loss per case is roughly 145,000 dollars, the presence of dishonest owners or executives can balloon the median loss to 500,000 dollars per incident. These figures underscore the necessity for robust internal controls that go beyond simple data entry monitoring.