Ghost employees are those who do not actually work for the entity but appear on the payroll. Inserting ghost employees in the payroll register is one of the common ways of asset misappropriation or assets fraud. What are

Asset misappropriation is a fraudulent conduct (or misconduct). Data analysis helps to detect frauds especially in bigger organization with many employees, customers, vendors and due to a large amount of data, manual forensic audit is impractical. Inserting Ghost or fictitious employees in the payroll register are those who does not actually work for the entity. Detecting fraudulent payments and siphoning off funds can be detected with data analysis to cover ghost employees. Tests that can help unravel fictitious employees are: Check whether multiple employees are using the same bank account Employee using multiple bank accounts Multiple employees have same home address. Employees still on the payroll even after resignation/dismissal/retirement date Head count analysis department wise. With the help of IDEA DATA analysis software etc., test for employees with the same address can be made as a process of fraud detection.