Employee theft costs businesses an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars each year and a report from The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. has some insights on the four most common crime schemes impacting business owners and recommendations on how to prevent them from occurring.

"Business owners spend a significant amount of time and resources protecting their business from a variety of risks, whether it's liability for their products or services or severe weather," said Helen R. Savaiano, president of management liability at The Hanover. "But, what can sometimes be overlooked are the risks presented by unscrupulous employees and unfortunately, those types of losses happen more often than business owners think."