The fact that workers with expense accounts still feel they’re getting paid so little that they deserve to commit fraud says something about that stratum of employee.
Businesses are increasingly being deceived by employees using artificial intelligence for an age-old scam: faking expense receipts.
The launch of new image-generation models by top AI groups such as OpenAI and Google in recent months has sparked an influx of AI-generated receipts submitted internally within companies, according to leading expense software platforms.
Software provider AppZen said fake AI receipts accounted for about 14 percent of fraudulent documents submitted in September, compared with none last year. Fintech group Ramp said its new software flagged more than $1 million in fraudulent invoices within 90 days.
About 30 percent of US and UK financial professionals surveyed by expense management platform Medius reported they had seen a rise in falsified receipts following the launch of OpenAI’s GPT-4o last year.
The fact that workers with expense accounts still feel they’re getting paid so little that they deserve to commit fraud says something about that stratum of employee.
Pretty much anyone who travels has to submit receipts. Most people who travel are not making bank. They’re the people who set up and stand at convention booths, sales staff support, assistants, videographers, etc. Also, most travel is a miserable ordeal. I’m not saying it’s okay to commit fraud, but let’s not equate the hourly employee “re-creating” his lost lunch receipt with a 6-figure income.
I used to be required to track all the receipts for travel years ago, and at some point like a decade ago the state figured out way more money was being spent on budgeting, reimbursing, and auditing each purchase individually than they would save by just doing a flat per diem rate for food and incidental expenses based on travel location.
I still keep my receipts long enough to make sure I’m not going over what I will be reimbursed, but shred them when I get home.
Yeah we recently switched to per diem for meals. Still have to keep receipts for hotels and vehicle rentals/gas etc but it’s nice not having to juggle 60 meal receipts.
in my country it used to be like this for 50 years, you get flat rate per day, counted up to fractions of day, separately for accomodation and food + everything else. you only have to keep transportation tickets
Meanwhile I’m out here like “wow I hope I submitted my receipt correctly and do not get banished to the shadow realm”
But why? It’s so easy to make your own face receipts.
Especially when you get an email receipt. Just inspect element that bad boy.
You ask too much from the normies.
Yes fapiao culture!
The bar i used to drink at in SW china would write fake receipts for business travellers. The one time i was there for it a dutch guy came in, bought an expensive bottle of maotai for everyone to share, then the owners wrote him a receipt for twice that much. The patrons got drunk, the bar got paid and the guy got to steal from his company.
Just your classic win/win/win.
And accounting, having no idea what the going price of maotai is and what the markup might be in a service setting, just goes “yeah, that seems reasonable.” The perfect crime.
AI creates demand for fraud detection by enabling fraud. It’s a brilliant business case worthy of McKinsey’s consultants. Right up there with auto-glass companies giving 8 year old kids free slingshots and bags of ballbearings.
Also I think that is what happens with Cloudflare. I mean I can imagine they have agencies to put load on popular websites, just to offer them the solution. At least it makes sense from business point, so I can’t be the only one coming up with it.
As old as time…
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
-Adam Smith
behold, disruption
I feel like AI would just fuck it up with hallucinations or something. Faking a receipt would be trivial even for an idiot.
