Excel Fraud Detection: Spotting Anomalies with Benford's Law | Script Data Insights Stop Corporate Theft: Using Benford's Law for Excel Fraud Detection Numbers don't lie, but people do. When fraudsters "cook the books," they almost always make a fatal mathematical mistake that you can catch in seconds using a simple Excel formula. The Problem: The Manual Audit Trap Traditional auditing involves checking random samples of receipts and invoices. This "needle in a haystack" approach is slow, expensive, and easily bypassed by a clever fraudster. If you are looking at 10,000 transactions, how do you know which ones to investigate first? Most people try to find fraud by looking for duplicate amounts or round numbers. While useful, these methods miss the subtle statistical anomalies created when a human tries to invent "random" financial data. ...