Payroll Fraud Scheme

979 Words4 Pages
After reading Chapter 10 of our text concerning “Payroll Fraud Schemes”, I began to think about a recent scandal that took place in our local town’s city council. Alonzo “Lonnie” Bates, 68, a former Detroit city councilman and Detroit Public Schools board member is currently serving a 33-month sentence after being convicted of theft and bank fraud charges related to placing “ghost employees” who did little or no work for the city, on his City Hall payroll. He was convicted August 2008, I found a recent article titled “Past Legal Troubles”, published by The Detroit News, on March 25, 2008. The article describes the indictment and many charges that were filed against the former city councilman concerning the “ghost employee’s payroll fraud”.…show more content…
In addition, payroll calculation schemes concerning the payroll office occur, but on a less frequent basis. “Ghost employees” are individuals listed in the payroll register, who are not providing services, but who are receiving a payroll check. The generic fraud scheme requires the ability to place an individual or retain a terminated employee on the payroll system, falsify the time and attendance reporting and divert the payroll payment. There are eight typical variations of the inherent ghost employee fraud scheme: Fictitious employee, terminated ghost employee scheme, pre-employment ghost employee scheme, no-show ghost employee scheme, and temporary employees bypass critical hiring controls, temporary employees working through agencies, family member ghost employees, and unclaimed payroll check schemes. Ghost employees tend to occur in departments where they would not be evident, and the local manager has a high degree of control over the hiring process. These characteristics are useful in the search for the ghost…show more content…
The nature of an employee’s work status facilitates the concealing of ghost employees. Another way to identify ghost employees is to identify opportunities that allow for the diversion of the payroll payment. There are six audit procedures for ghost employees: (1) Examine employees’ government identification documents. (2) Compare their employees’ government identification to known true government identification for signs of alteration or creation. (3) Obtain employee files regarding to identify documents and handwriting. (4) Interview employees regarding their department or job duties. (5) Examine documents for evidence of job performance. (6) Examine other logical databases for
Open Document