Payroll fraud involves manipulating corporate disbursement platforms to route unauthorized funds to internal staff or external bank accounts. The most severe manifestation of this risk is a Ghost Employee Scheme, where an individual who does not work for the organization is maintained on the payroll database.

The ghost can be a completely fabricated identity, a deceased individual, or a former employee whose termination file was intentionally intercepted or delayed by a corrupt human resources manager.

[Intercept Separation Notice] ──► [Maintain Profile on Payroll] ──► [Divert Direct Deposit Pipeline]

The perpetrator alters the system routing logs to redirect the ghost’s automated salary disbursements to a bank account they control. Similar manipulations occur within sales environments via commission fraud, where sales executives alter transaction values, backdate contract dates, or report phantom sales volume to clear bonus tiers.

Commission Multiplier = Gross Recorded Bookings * ( 1 + Fabricated Volume Override % )

To proactively uncover ghost employee profiles and commission manipulations, fraud units deploy advanced transactional data checks. The audit team runs data scripts to cross-reference active payroll employee files against data entries held in the US Social Security Death Index (SSDI) and local census databases, helping to flag invalid identities or anomalous payment channels.