Strange Increases in Vendor Payment Volume

Katy’s husband has been out of work for months now, and the unpaid bills are starting to pile up.  They skipped their anniversary trip to Vegas this year.   “Our life is like a game of high stakes poker right now,” they joked.   The thought of empty stockings and disappointed kids on Christmas morning was no [...]

True Story Round-up for November 9

A True Story Round-up for November 9, 2010:

Fire department loses $113,205 to a bookkeeper with a bad coke habit.

Owners ask for lite sentence for bookkeeper who stole more than $50,000 from the company.

A woman has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for embezzling more than $1.5 million from a timber company to feed [...]

True Story Round-up for November 3

A True Story Round-up for November 3, 2010:

Bookkeeper at real estate firm steals $30,000 and goes to jail.  The owner discovered crime when bookkeeper took vacation.

A former bookkeeper accused of stealing more than $200,000 from one of her clients says she has proof she didn’t take the money, according to her lawyer.

A judge has [...]

Unapplied Credits and Checks to Vendors with Open Bills

Everyone makes mistakes.  We tell ourselves they’re great life lessons, but we’d all like to avoid them if we could.  Especially the simple mistakes.  It’s often one small detail that makes the difference between “getting it right the first time” and “paying to fix it”.

Experts say that more than half of all accounting mistakes result [...]

True Story Round-up for October 26

A True Story Round-up for October 26, 2010:

What do Hendrick Health System, Cary Services, Pee Wee Jets Pop Warner Football Team and KGNZ Radio have in common? They are all in Abilene, TX. They all have budgets (granted, they are very different sized budgets). And they all experienced embezzlement [...]

Approval Limit Violations

My wife and I have this unwritten agreement on purchases.  If you’re spending more than $500, a “heads-up” is nice.

Many companies have similar policies.  Purchases over a certain dollar amount need to be approved by a manager.  In more sophisticated systems approval amounts may increase with title or even require sign off by more than [...]

True Story Round-up for October 19

A True Story Round-up for October 19, 2010:

A man suspected of embezzling at least $250,000 from his employer has been charged with 13 counts of forgery, and one count each of first-degree theft and first-degree identify theft.

A plea agreement has been reached in a case involving a woman accused of embezzling more [...]

True Story Round-up for October 12

A True Story Round-up for October 12, 2010:

An employee for a pet clinic responsible for their bookkeeping embezzled nearly $80,000 from the business.

A New Vienna woman has been indicted by a grand jury for the alleged theft of $312,000 from her employer where she worked as a bookkeeper.

A bookkeeper for a  home builder has been [...]

Spotting Shell Company Schemes

It was the perfect crime.  For only $35 Paul was in business.  That small investment bought him a fictitious-name or DBA (doing business as) certificate— which was the key to his grand plan to defraud his employer.

He used the certificate to set-up a business checking account and then added his new enterprise as a vendor [...]

True Story Round-up for September 28

A True Story Round-up for September 28, 2010:

Bookkeeper steals $122,513.80 from a business, mostly by using a photocopier to endorse dozens of checks made payable as “cash” and depositing money into his personal bank account.

A former bookkeeper for a developer has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after embezzling almost $900,000.  [...]