Perhaps the most mind-blowing finding of a new embezzlement study is that fraudulent schemes across all industries go on undetected for years, and that in most cases, outside auditors never catch the thief who is likely to be a 48-year-old woman who works in a finance or accounting job.

"A scheme dating back to the Carter administration?" the headline asked incredulously in the 2017 Hiscox Embezzlement Study.

"It's hard to fathom a scheme lasting the better part of four decades, but with two sets of books, an Iowa credit union employee orchestrated a theft from the time of her hiring in 1978 until 2015," noted the study authored by Doug Karpp, Crime & Fidelity product head at Hiscox, a global specialist insurer based in Bermuda.