Fraud is any intentional deceitful act undertaken for one to generate profit or have an advantage. Fraud incorporate is similar to cheating in the financial market or business. Fraudulent scandals are cynical, as corporations and companies find loopholes in specific regulations as well as the laws, they begin to maneuver and take advantage to benefit from the rules (Larson, 2015) . These activities at times go to extreme lengths and grow to become a fraud. Financial institutions such as the FASB, SEC and the federal government monitors fraud activities. This paper will focus on the meaning of cheating, the effects of fraud to be a profession as well as business and how fraud can be identified and curtailed.
Fraud can easily disrupt the normal activities of any business or firm, whether it is big or small. Nevertheless, small enterprises are affected when the management and employees participate in fraudster activities. Fraud can also endanger the growth and survival of the enterprise by reducing the confidence of partners as well as clients or even facilitating mistrust among the employees (Chang, 2016) . Fraud can also affect the business through financial loss; a firm dealing in fraudulent activities can be affected by loses in finance as a result of its image being stained. No investor will want to be in business with a firm that has a lousy record, hence can never be trusted. Fraud also affects motivation among professionals in a firm; this can result in disruption to the normal operations that an enterprise or company depends on for growth as well as sustainability. Fraud may also affect the audits in business; it makes regular inspections harder as well as complicated.
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Identifying potential fraud and preventing them from happening is a significant factor for the success of any business or firm. Identifying together with preventing fraudulent activities can seem to be an impossible task, but it is easier to be achieved by following the steps below. They include; applicant's screenings in the business or firm, the first step in identification and prevention is running background checks before hiring employees into the company or enterprise. This is particularly important for employees in higher positions in the business (Beckford, 2016) . The next step is developing business policies as well as controls, and the most critical step is growing, then implementing and then enforcing the specific restrictions and procedures across the company or businesses. Some business has established whistleblower hotlines that enable the workers to come forward when they are made aware of any fraudulent activities.
The last step in identifying and preventing the fraud in organizations and business is educating the employees as a team on ways to identify as well as to avoid fraud quickly. The Sarbanes Oxley Act is a law that mandates all public and private firms to submit a yearly evaluation of the effectiveness of its internal auditing policies and controls to the SEC (Beckford, 2016) . It was enacted in the year 2002 after a series of fraudulent scandals in the American corporate sector. More so, every external auditor of firms and business are mandated to audit and then report on the financial statements as well as control reports on the management of fraud. If the Sarbanes Oxley acct were enacted earlier than 2002, it would have prevented several accounting scandals such as Enron and Tyco that lead to massive loses for companies as well as investors.
References
Beckford, M. (2016). Identifying and Preventing Fraud in business. The Business Review , 45-52.
Chang, S. (2016). Fraud and its impacts on Business. Havard Business Review , 22-30.
Larson, A. (2015). Fraud, silent fraud, and innocent Misrepresentation. Journal of Expert Law .
