Johannesburg — IDENTITY theft had become the fastest growing commercial crime in the world and cost governments worldwide billions of dollars a year to control, Dave Loxton, a partner at law firm Bowman Gilfillan, said yesterday.

Identity theft occurs when one's personal information is stolen and used to commit fraud and other crimes.

Loxton was commenting at the white-collar crime seminar in Johannesburg on the latest white-collar crime trends . Having attended the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners in Florida last month and the Business Ethics Network-Africa conference in Addis Ababa earlier this month, Loxton said his impression was that fraud prevention was low-key around the world and that SA was way ahead of the pack in fighting fraud.

He said despite the fact that major corporate failures had occurred in the US and Europe due to fraud, the perception still existed that Africa was more corrupt.

Meanwhile, privacy in the workplace was becoming an issue as employers intruded more into their employees' activities to investigate fraudulent activities.

Loxton said this led to problematic investigative activities -- whereby investigators collected evidence illegally -- which meant the admissibility of evidence in court became an issue.

Horwath Forensics director Terence Hatzkilson said forensic accounting had become a tool in the fight against crime.

Hatzkilson said the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimated that US organisations lost about 6% of annual revenues, or about $600bn, to fraud. He said the study also said a fraud scheme operated for about 18 months before it was detected.

Loxton said in the US, the number one scam continued to be the advance fee fraud, usually referred to as the 419 scam. The second involved criminals operating fraudulent charities.