Attention employers: that thirty-something loner who's been making good progress with the company for the past few years despite his lack of formal education — watch him; he could be a snake.

A new survey of Canadian companies suggests the typical corporate fraudster has all of the above characteristics. The auditing firm KPMG found that almost three-quarters of the people who defraud their companies are men, 69 per cent are between the ages of 30 and 49 and have usually been with the company between three and five years.

About 40 per cent had no post-secondary education.

And they usually acted alone.

James Hunter, the head of KPMG's forensic practice unit, admits those are a lot of conclusions to draw from fairly thin data. The firm sent out about 1,500 questionnaires to Canadian corporations — and received 72 responses, which led them to a total of 142 cases of fraud.

"It's impossible in this country to get a handle on fraud involving corporations because there is no reporting mechanism," he said.

Companies have no obligation to report a fraud to the authorities.

"Many corporations do have a policy of turning over these cases to the police, but with large corporations, it's done on a case by case basis," Hunter said.

Basically, it turns out Canadian companies don't especially like to admit they've been hosed. Statistics Canada has had similar problems collecting fraud numbers. Based on 2007 police records, it found there were about 268 frauds per 100,000 Canadians. But the agency believes the crime is under-reported.

Nevertheless, Hunter believes he's getting a grasp on the problem.

He says the vast majority of frauds, more than 70 per cent, KPMG studied involved thefts of under $100,000 (see sidebar).

"Which for a large corporation, is basically a drop in the bucket," he said.

Companies that did admit to being victims provided some unexpected data. Most of the fraudsters, 45 per cent, came from the company's operations departments, and just 14 per cent were from accounting. Seven per cent were in procurement.

'Whistleblowers come to a sad end. They're not seen as heroes; they're seen as rats and are very often fired.'— James Hunter, KPMG

"The message I get from that is that there are opportunities everywhere and that there is no one group that has the monopoly on morality," said Hunter. "Intuitively, we all think they're going to be in accounting. Accounting allows you to cover up the bad thing. And certainly for the more complicated schemes, you do need someone with a knowledge of books and records. But the most simple things — dishonesty with expense accounts, stealing cash, stealing assets — you're not quite as involved in a cover-up. "

Hunter says as a forensic accountant, his job has been made a lot easier thanks to whistleblower hotlines. Exceptional Crook: Most fraudsters are junior employees , less educated, and of course, take far less cash than convicted felon Bernard Madoff. CP

"When these bad things are going on in a corporation, there will be many people who know or suspect a bad thing is happening," he said. "And unless you have the mechanism to speak up confidentially and anonymously, they will not speak up, because whistleblowers come to a sad end. They're not seen as heroes; they're seen a rats and are very often fired.

"[But] if large corporations have a whistleblower hotline to an external service provider that says to employees if you see something bad happening, you call this number. You can call anonymously, and we'll take action. That is a very powerful tool.

"It really brings fraud to light much sooner. "

In fact, KPMG found that 61 per cent of frauds were brought to a company's attention within less than a year.

Hunter was also impressed with the low level of corruption in Canada. That usually means offering a bribe to have someone in a high position, usually in government, perform some kind of unauthorized activity.

"If you look at the types of fraud that occurred in Canada, only four per cent would be described as corruption. If you compare that to what we find in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, they're up to 23 per cent. I find that very interesting — that our government is more honest than in other countries."

There you go: the true north, strong and at least 96 per cent corruption-free.