While a ghost employee may sound like a haunting at your business, it’s actually much less supernatural but still terrifying. They are actually involved as a part of workplace fraud, possibly costing your business a great deal more money than you expect.

What Makes an Employee a Ghost?

A ghost employee is someone who is on a payroll but doesn’t actually exist or no longer works there, according to http://www.wwspi.com/. They come to be when the employee in charge of payroll manufactures fake identities or uses terminated employee info in order to give themselves multiple paychecks. When a business is managing a large number of employees, it can be easy to overlook these ghost employees, as a few extra employees are hard to notice.

How to Exterminate Ghosts

There are multiple preventative actions that can be taken in order to reduce the chance of a ghost employee fraud and to notice anything fishy going on.

• Have multiple people work to manage payroll
• Check employee SSNs regularly through Social Security or IRS verification
• Keep employee information up-to-date
• Be wary of requests for paper checks rather than direct deposits
• Have employees verify who they are when they receive their payments, such as with a swipe system, and keep an eye out for specific employees regularly swiping at the same time
• Have a Crime policy as part of your insurance, giving you extra protection should something go unnoticed too long