All of the following are types of expense reimbursement schemes EXCEPT:

• A. Mischaracterized expenses
• B. Fictitious expenses
• C. Ghost expense reports
• D. Multiple reimbursements

Answer: (C)

Understanding expense reimbursement fraud, you’re looking at ways someone can steal by exploiting the reimbursement process. The frequently seen techniques involve fabricating or misreporting expenses and duplicating claims.

Mischaracterized expenses occur when personal or non-reimbursable costs are written up as business expenses or placed into the wrong category to conceal them or to manipulate totals. Fictitious expenses involve creating fake receipts or vendors to claim reimbursement for costs that never happened. Multiple reimbursements happen when the same actual expense is submitted more than once, generating duplicate payments.

Ghost expense reports, on the other hand, aren’t a distinct, recognized scheme type. They would reflect a control weakness—reports in the system that lack real underlying transactions or receipts—but they aren’t a separate fraudulent technique like the others. So they’re the exception among common expense-reimbursement fraud categories.