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The New Expense Scam Costing Businesses Millions

ended 27. October 2025

A wave of escalating expense fraud is quietly draining company budgets and trust, according to new analysis reported by the Financial Times.

AppZen, a leading finance audit platform used by global firms including Amazon and Salesforce, reports that fabricated receipts now make up 14% of fraudulent claims globally, up from none last year. Fintech Ramp has flagged $1 million of false invoices in just 90 days.

According to SAP, 70 % of CFOs believe staff have tried to falsify expenses, with around 10% certain it has already happened inside their company.

What once required design skills can now be done with a short prompt. OpenAI told the Financial Times it takes action when its images breach policy and adds metadata to flag them, although AI experts say a determined user can still cover their tracks.

The forgeries are unnervingly life-like with crumpled paper, restaurant logos, even fake signatures. 

They’re flooding expense systems faster than humans can verify them. What used to be a minor paperwork task has become a daily trust test. Finance teams now spend hours cross-checking receipts that “look right” but feel wrong, and genuine staff risk being treated like suspects.

We’d like your views:

  • When the evidence itself can be faked, what kind of transaction proof should businesses still trust?
  • Could finance teams now be spending more time chasing £30 fakes than fixing a £3,000 billing error?
  • Should anti-fraud tools protect the integrity of honest staff as much as they protect company money?
  • If technology is deciding what’s “real”, who keeps the final say, the algorithm or the professional, and what does that mean for managing risk?

 

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Colette MasonVerified
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
Expense fraud has always existed; it’s simply evolved from Tippex and photocopiers to flawless digital replicas. The motive hasn’t changed, but the forgery now looks identical and that makes trust a cost centre rather than a given. When the cost of cheating falls to zero, the cost of proving honesty explodes.

Businesses are being pushed to pour money into anti-fraud tech that can still be circumvented instead of investing in AI systems that actually boost productivity and profitability.
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Kundan BhaduriVerified
Entrepreneur, Investor and Landlord at The Kushman Group
What once required Photoshop expertise now takes a simple ChatGPT prompt (other now notorious AI models are available) to generate receipts complete with creased paper, authentic logos, and convincing signatures. The irony is that large companies have invested millions in AI to automate expense processing while their employees are often using identical technologies to game the system faster than humans can audit it. Larger companies are pouring resources into anti fraud technology that determined users can still circumvent rather than addressing the workplace pressures and pay structures that are driving people to cheat in the first place.
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Patricia McGirrVerified
Founder at Repossession Rescue Network
AI may be forging the receipts, but it’s people and cultures under pressure that are crossing the line.

For some staff it’s greed dressed up as ingenuity. For others it’s stress and survival pushing them into choices they’d never normally make. Technology hasn’t created fraud; it’s just made it easier to hide.

The new wave of AI-fuelled expense fraud isn’t clever, it’s cultural. When companies glorify growth and neglect governance, people learn that getting away with it is part of the job. Firms are paying twice, once for the fraud and again for the collapse of trust it breeds.

If businesses want to stem this tide, they need more than tighter systems. They need leadership that values transparency, fair pay and accountability from the top down. If businesses really want to stop this, they need to fix the culture, not just the software. Strong systems can catch a fake, but only strong leadership stops people wanting to create one.