CORPORATE fraud jumped in Scotland last year, according to a firm of accountants monitoring the crime.
In its annual review of high-profile cases BDO found that more than £10m was stolen in 2014, up from just over £6m a year before.
The company - which uses press cuttings and court reports to track frauds of over £50,000 - said half of the crimes were carried out by individuals to fund lavish lifestyles.
Law enforcement insiders, however, regard the headline figures obtained by BDO to be merely the "tip of the iceberg" with most corporations failing to call in outside authorities to investigate.
The BDO figures captured some 29 cases in Scotland valued at more than £50,000. One single fraud of £3m accounted for much of the rise in value recorded by the firm.
In the UK the total value of fraud in 2014 as measured by BDO was £720m, a decrease of 31 per cent from the previous year and the lowest value since the firm's "FraudTrack" monitoring exercise began in 2003.
Just two frauds - a film tax evasion case, and a money laundering operation at a bureaux de change - accounted for nearly two-thirds of the fraud haul recorded by BDO.
The firm's tally, however, is far lower than other industry estimates.
It compares with more than 221,000 cases of all values - including plastic card and online transactions - confirmed across the UK in 2013 by the national fraud database run by CIFAS.
Scottish director of fraud at BDO LLP, Judith Scott, said figures for fraud cases in the public domain still suggested mortgage scams were important.
She said: "The increase in fraud in Scotland during 2014 indicates that, despite the improvement in the economy, there are always individuals who will jump at an opportunity for fraud."
"The large value of the finance and insurance frauds is largely based on mortgage fraud which clearly remains an issue for lenders.
"It would seem that determined individuals (and the largest fraud involved six people working as a group) can still get through the checks and balances of lenders to misappropriate large sums of money."
"The large number of theft and cash fraud is a worrying indication that many companies simply do not have suitable security arrangements in place to prevent such frauds. Such frauds tend to be fairly simple arrangements which exploit a loophole in a company's financial systems.
"Often these can easily be detected but are carried out by someone in a position of trust. However, the growth in number of reported frauds suggests that the police and courts are becoming increasingly effective at convicting low level fraudulent activity."
Ms Scott stressed that many of the cases dealt with n courts in 2014 were "old fashioned" manipulation and relatively low-tech, such as false invoices.
The numbers almost certainly do not reflect the sheer volume of "insider threat" crimes affecting firms - never mind the real scale of cyber fraud.
Brian Gibson, of the Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC), said: "Companies affected by these crimes should review their procedures and report the matter to the police, although we recognise the challenges that may bring.
"But companies should learn from their mistakes and ensure that their assets are safe by seeking advice from an organisation like the SBRC."
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