{"id":15878,"date":"2014-11-05T14:02:06","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T19:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/saratogabusinessjournal\/2014\/11\/whats-your-fraud-weakness.html"},"modified":"2014-11-05T14:02:06","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T19:02:06","slug":"whats-your-fraud-weakness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/saratogabusinessjournal\/2014\/11\/whats-your-fraud-weakness\/","title":{"rendered":"Business Report: What’s Your Fraud Weakness?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"fraud\n<\/div>\n
Pamela Wickes is a certified fraud examiner with Teal, Becker & Chiaramonte\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

BY PAMELA WICKES CPA, CFE<\/p>\n

Nov. 16-22 is International Fraud Awareness
\nWeek and hundreds of businesses, agencies
\nand other entities around the globe will help
\nshine on the opportunities that regularly arise
\nwithin businesses that can lead to employee
\nembezzlement in hopes to prevent future fraud
\nor uncover existing acts of deception.<\/p>\n

As a certified fraud examiner, I wanted to
\nshare a couple of stories that demonstrate
\nsome unfortunate instances of fraud, and shed
\nlight on how they could have been avoided.<\/p>\n

The fraud triangle is a model for explaining
\nthe factors that cause someone to commit
\nfraud within a company. It consists of three
\ncomponents which, together, lead to fraudulent
\nbehavior: motivation\/pressure, opportunity,
\nand rationalization. Famed criminologist
\nDonald Cressey came up with this hypothesis
\nto explain why people commit fraud.<\/p>\n

It may be difficult for management to
\ndo anything about an employee’s needs or
\nrationalizations. Business owners have the
\nmost control over the perceived opportunity.
\nThe opportunity to commit fraud is possible
\nwhen employees have access to assets and
\ninformation that allows them to both commit
\nand conceal fraud.<\/p>\n

Small businesses are particularly vulnerable
\nbecause they often lack the resources
\nof larger organizations. The most common
\ndownfall for small businesses is the lack of
\nsegregation of duties due to limited number
\nof employees.<\/p>\n

Segregation of duties is a basic building
\nblock of internal controls for an organization.
\nThe goal is to disperse functions of an accounting
\nprocess to more than one person. An
\nexample of the segregation of duties would be:
\na company’s requirement that bank statements
\nare mailed to the owner’s personal residence,
\nand that the bank account statement must
\nbe reconciled to the accounting records by
\nsomeone other than the person writing the
\nchecks and someone other than a person
\nrecording the amounts in the company’s accounting
\nrecords. Segregating duties creates
\nchecks and balances.<\/p>\n

Recently, I led an investigation that revealed
\na controller had the opportunity to
\nemploy multiple schemes to extract money
\nfrom a company for the controller’s personal
\nbenefit. The controller prepared the payroll
\nreports and determined the amount of direct
\ndeposits to employees’ accounts.<\/p>\n

The amounts of the transfer from the company’s
\nbank account exceeded the amount necessary
\nfor the direct deposits, which revealed
\nthat the controller was directing the company’s
\nmoney to cover child support obligations. The
\ncontroller recorded the transaction in a “clearing
\naccount” in the general ledger and was
\nresponsible for reconciling the bank accounts.<\/p>\n

The controller also paid personal IRS settlement
\nobligations out of the company’s checking
\naccount. Apparently, while the controller
\nwas not authorized to sign company checks,
\nthere was a signature stamp at the office. The
\ncontroller recorded these transactions against
\nthe owner’s loan account in the accounting
\nrecords. Again, the controller was responsible
\nfor reconciling the bank accounts and there
\nwas no segregation of duties in this regard.<\/p>\n

In my opinion, the most deceitful of the
\ncontroller’s actions was the alteration and
\nfalsification of the company’s financial records
\nprovided to and relied upon by the owner and
\nthird parties. The controller did not include
\ncertain significant liabilities and understated
\nbank debt in the financial reports prepared.<\/p>\n

This was harder to identify than the cash
\ntransactions because it required analysis of
\noriginal books and records in comparison to
\nthose issued to third parties. A red flag was the
\nfact that all the financial reports produced by
\nthe controller were generated in Excel rather
\nthan printed directly from the sophisticated
\naccounting program the company used.<\/p>\n

In another matter, a union business office
\nmanager, who was responsible for preparing
\nthe payroll, gave himself an unauthorized
\nraise. Unfortunately, this came to light shortly
\nafter I had warned of that risk during an internal
\ncontrols evaluation. In this situation,
\nthere was not enough oversight with regard
\nto the duties performed by the business office
\nmanager.<\/p>\n

In another investigation I led, an accounting
\nclerk sent bills to customers, but deleted
\ncertain ones from the accounting records before
\nthey were posted as revenue and accounts
\nreceivable. When the customer paid the bill
\nthat was no longer reflected in the accounting
\nrecords, the clerk applied the payment to the
\nclerk’s and the clerk’s family’s accounts.<\/p>\n

In some instances, the bill was not deleted
\nfrom the system, but instead the clerk
\n“adjusted” the customer’s account balance
\nto reflect a lower balance, as if the payment
\nhad been appropriately applied. The lack of
\nsegregation of duties related to the revenue
\nand collection cycle provided opportunity for
\nthis fraud scheme.<\/p>\n

Each of those examples occurred in organizations
\nthat had ample number of employees
\nto segregate functions appropriately. However,
\nmany small businesses that don’t have enough
\nemployees to segregate duties can still protect
\nthemselves by employing some or all of the
\nfollowing:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Mail the bank statements to the owner’s
\nhome for an overview of the transactions and
\nparties on the cancelled checks.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Have an outside accountant perform the
\nbank reconciliations, particularly when there
\nis only one employee performing accounting
\nduties at the company.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Perform surprise audits of the cash
\naccount(s) on occasion.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 Implement a manner to receive tips, which
\nis the most frequent method of fraud detection.<\/p>\n

Wickes is director of forensic accounting,
\nTeal, Becker & Chiaramonte CPAs, PC.<\/p>\n

Photo Courtesy Teal, Becker & Chiaramonte<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pamela Wickes is a certified fraud examiner with Teal, Becker & Chiaramonte BY PAMELA WICKES CPA, CFE Nov. 16-22 is International Fraud Awareness Week and hundreds of businesses, agencies and other entities around the globe will help shine on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[58,70],"class_list":["post-15878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-reports","tag-business-reports","tag-financial"],"yoast_head":"\r\nBusiness Report: What's Your Fraud Weakness? - Saratoga Business Journal<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.saratoga.com\/saratogabusinessjournal\/2014\/11\/whats-your-fraud-weakness\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Business Report: What's Your Fraud Weakness? 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