Benford's Law and fraud detection in Portuguese enterprises

Abstract

The Benford's Law allows the identification of numbers manipulation indications and, therefore, it may be used as a technique to support the auditor in the identification of evidence of fraud. This study intends to evaluate the behavior of 27,058 Portuguese companies seeking to answer questions such as “Do the financial statement headings follow the Benford's Law?” and “Do companies with negative net results show more deviations from the distribution of the Benford's Law?”. The analysis showed that the turnover for the activity sectors under study (lodging and restoration and similars) does not always follows the Benford's Law and the behavior is different depending on whether the company presents positive or negative results. The analysis of the information considering different financial situations enables to reinforce the importance of applying the Benford's Law as a control tool to be used by auditors.