In the corporate world, 70 per cent of white collar crimes are committed by people between 36 and 55 years. Over 80 per cent fraudsters are male. Members of senior management, including board members represent 60 per cent of all fraudsters.

Most often, the internal fraudster works in the finance department followed by operations\sale or as the CEO. Misappropriation of money is the most common fraud.

The startling findings on white collar crimes are from "Profile of a Fraudster Survey 2007" conducted by KPMG, an international tax and audit consultancy. This is KPMG's first-ever study that analyses actual fraud cases investigated by the international management advisory's forensic department in the EMA (Europe, Middle east and Africa) region and India.

The company selected 360 cases for analysis. KPMG claims that the survey is not statistical in the sense that it only covers cases covered by its own forensic division. The results, however, are interesting.

Nearly 50 per cent fraudsters had worked with the company for over six years. Almost 91 per cent of the perpetrators are not content with just one fraudulent transaction. They make several such transactions.

The survey says that perpetrators were able to commit frauds because of the weak internal controls. Most frauds were caught by whistleblowers or via management reviews.

As far as fraud management is concerned, in 50 per cent of the profiles, the companies did not share the information or details of the frau within the organisation. In 15 per cent of the cases the companies shared information selectively.

Media or authorities are rarely informed about the frauds so hardly any offenses undergo criminal investigations.