According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, American small businesses lose an average of 5 percent of their annual gross revenues to insider fraud that is, theft committed by their own employees. The Washington Post wrote about one recent, high-profile example: Debra Biagi was the assistant to the chairman at HB Nitkin Group, a family-owned real estate management and development firm in Greenwich, CT. She stole a total of $711,074.39 between February 2014 and December 2015. While this was certainly an extreme case of fraud, it is all too common in small businesses around the country.
