Billing Scheme: Internal Fraud Case Study

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Cover Story: Internal Fraud Terrence McGrane, a chief internal auditor, brand new to a popular magazine publishing company; uncovered a fraud by chance. In an effort to learn about his new company he decided that he was going to study the company’s invoices and interview top management. During his interview with Harold J. Scott, the vice president of administrative service, Terrence asked if some of the coding on the invoices can be explained. Through the analyzing of the invoices Harold Scott noticed that some of the invoices that were endorsed were forgeries and it was his name that was forged (Wells, Case Study: Bank Teller Gets Nabbed for Theft, 2011, p. 104). During the investigation Terrence discovered that all of the forged invoices were coming from the paint division where a 15 year veteran of the company was coordinating. Albert Maiano, a facilities supervisor, was creating fake invoices from his personal computer. Albert would create invoices for work that was not done and forge Harold’s signature. Then he would take the real invoices for approval and after the legit invoices where approved, Albert would slip his fake invoices in with the real ones. The way Albert got away with this is that he made the fake invoices so similar to the real ones that it did not raise a flag. On top of that, he was well liked in the company and was rarely questioned (Wells, 2011, pp. 104-105). The measure that the company could have taken to detect this scheme earlier is to periodically audit transactions by verifying payables with invoices. If Harold or the accounts payable department took more notice to the invoices they would have noticed the variations. Immediately after Harold studied the invoices, he was able to notice that there was a forgery. Since it was that easy for him to spot that, there should have been a control to compare invoices with one

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