When you look at theft from employees, you’ll find that it is far more common for men than it is for women. This is not to say that either gender is completely immune to workplace theft, but it simply doesn’t happen nearly as much with female employees.
For example, consider expense fraud. This is when someone tries to expense items that they shouldn’t, essentially stealing money from the company by being reimbursed for these costs. This happens about twice as often with men as it does with women. And that’s considering even minor cases. When you consider who is most likely to add around $1,000 to an expense report, it’s four times more common that men will do so.
Why do they do this?
A big reason for the difference is simply that men honestly do not seem to believe that they are going to get caught. When asked about this, one study revealed that men were about 62.2% more likely to think they could get away with these falsified expenses. Women were much more likely to believe that they would be caught, which may be why they are also far less likely to do this in the first place.
Some experts have suggested that there could be cultural issues in play here. For example, maybe more men are in positions of authority, so they believe that they will be able to embezzle money and hide it more successfully than women, who tend not to have that same authority position. This certainly doesn’t explain all cases, but it could explain some of the difference in the big-picture statistics.
Overall, anyone who has been accused of theft or embezzlement while at work must be sure they know about all of their criminal defense options. Something like this can have a drastic impact on your future and your career.