Fashioning a Fraud Case Study Essay

The case describes that, "...the accounting system could not be locked at the end of the month and there was no audit trail. Sachdeva and Mulvaney were thus able to make undetected post-closing changes to the books and bypass an internal control requiring Michael J. Koss to authorize those changes". These post-closing changes may be false entries done to hide theft during the accounting period. Further, because the reconciliations were done by the same people who initiated or recorded the transactions, the fraud could be covered up. For example, had one of them made an unauthorized purchase at a retail store where the expense were obviously not business related, they could have assigned the expense or expense description to a vendor where the transaction amount would have been normal. If the accounting system was not locked, they could have also just posted the transaction date back to a prior period that isn't likely to be reviewed.

This investigative report is based on a tip from an employee of the Department of Transportation (DOT), MARY MARSHALL, regarding possible misconduct and illegal activities. Specifically, Ms. Marshall states that a site manager, JERRY JOHNSON, is conducting personal business on government time. The following information

2) Frank A. Tassone; the former business manager, Pamela Gluckin; and an accounting clerk, Debra Rigano, who is a niece of Ms. Gluckin embezzled money in a scheme in which Dr. Tassone and Ms. Gluckin and nine of their family members and friends charged $5.9 million for personal items and cash advances on 74 personal credit cards. Then Ms. Gluckin and Dr. Tassone used district checks to pay those bills. The audit found that Dr. Tassone and

During the time of the scandal, which broke in mid-2005, PBS&J had 4,000 employees in 75 offices in 24 states (Barnett, 2007). A number of high-profile projects were under construction with FDOT, OOCEA, and TxDOT. The funds from these projects were being brought into the firm at a rapid rate; however, PBS&J contained a flimsy internal controls system which facilitated the embezzlement that eventually took place. The major players of the scandal were located in the firm’s Miami office. They were Scott DeLoach, then chief financial officer (CFO); Maria Garcia, an accounting employee who was in charge of the office’s database and bank reconciliations; and Rosario Licata, a bookkeeper who maintained the firm’s benefits bank account (Eubanks, 2016).

1. Write a client outcome to help Mrs. Ross resolve the symptoms (i.e., defining characteristics). Refer to Section III (beginning on p. 119) of the Ackley and Ladwig text.

Throughout history and in our own time, legitimate accounting methods have been utilized to fraudulently engage in manipulating activities that results in illicit gains to the perpetrators and losses to individuals and financial institutions.

The main objective of this investigation is to see if funds are being misappropriated and who is misappropriating these funds. In conducting this investigation we needed to take many steps to ensure that the tip that the department received was true. To begin we checked personnel records and company records to gather information (Albrecht, Albrecht, and Zimbelman, 216) on the suspect, Rita Crundwell. Information such as how long has this suspect has worked in the city, what her position is, and what it entails. We also went through the accounts that she is transferring the cities money into and verified that all of these are all legitimate accounts of the city. If we found any errors or accounts that were not legitimate we would note these down and ask Rita about these accounts during the interview.

Based on the case, Who You Gonna Call by Kevin D. Zeiler, Nicki is working in the billing department for a large, for profit health care organization. She has been working for the company for two and a half years and was just recently promoted to senior Medicare Billing Specialist. Due to her recent promotion she has been granted the ability to information she was not able to before, she then found discrepancies surrounding the way many of the Medicare invoices were coded. She informed her supervisor. The response of the supervisor was this is how we will continue to code these documents and Nicki should focus on training and monitoring her team/staff. She found the response very strange and after six months has passed, she does not feel comfortable and does not know what to do. While Nicki was reading the paper, she read about another facility who is being investigated for Medicare fraud.

The amount listed is the enrollment agreement was 10,020.00 which gives a difference of :

In a scheme based in New Jersey and set to spread to eleven other states, Sheila Kahl, admitted to participating is a $1 Million Dollar Medicare fraud scheme. Along with her accomplice, Seth Rehfuss, convinced senior citizens to get genetic testic. The two fraudsters received commissions based off of the quantity of test that were ordered. To escalate matters, the two fraudsters used craigslist to locate healthcare providers that would work with them. Additionally, the two fraudsters also paid kickbacks to the healthcare providers that signed off on the testing for the senior citizens. (Pressofatlanticcity.com," n.d.)

Healthcare services have been on the rise for over 10 years now. According to a 2012 consumer alert, the industry provided $2.26 trillion in payments for more than four billion health insurance benefit claims in the year 2011(Fraud in Health Care). The bulk of the claims and the mainstream of fraud and abuse stem from the Medicare system professionals, who are knowledgeable about the process and persuade new clients into handing over their pertinent information in hopes of deception and illegitimate claims. Multiple and double billing, fraudulent prescriptions, are some of the major flaws in this organization that has made the healthcare services industry curdle. (AGHAEGBUNA, 2011) This is a non-violet crime and is often committed by very

* An ARC call center employee wrote money orders in the names of various relief victims and fraudulently cashing them herself.

As the healthcare industry begins to expand its horizons, by featuring more staff and patients, the types of frauds that are committed also rise in number and complexity. One of the many consequences that derives from fraud within the healthcare system includes an increase in the cost of healthcare itself. In order to limit and analyze fraud that encompasses the entirety of the healthcare industry, it is necessary to assess the different types of frauds and in doing so also understand the method of reimbursement involving the professionals and members of the health care industry. Since a majority of these reimbursements are paid by insurances or through government programs, a program known as coding was created in order to organize and properly pay off these reimbursements(Marilyn Price, Donna Norris, 2009). One of the many

Combating fraud in the private sector is a difficult task. Trying to combat fraud in the public sector is daunting. In 1999 15.7% of the American workforce were employed by a government entity (federal, state, and local).[1] Mirroring society, government will have its share of perpetrators. The difference from the private sector is in the scope of the fraud committed, the loss of the public trust, the blaring headlines from news media, and difficulty in making necessary changes to combat the problems.

The personnel and payroll cycle includes the hiring of employees, recording hours worked, withholding and, recording of taxes, distributing payment for work performed, and properly documenting the termination of employees. Payroll can be a significant expense for a company and without proper internal controls can be vulnerable to fraud. Some common types of the fraud within the payroll cycle consist of ghost employees, claiming unworked hours, and pay rate alteration. The objective of a payroll audit is to determine if the current balances in the audit period are fairly stated and in accordance with accounting principles. According Arens, Elder, and Beasley, “Tests of controls and substantive tests of transactions procedures are the most important means of verifying account balances in the payroll and personnel cycle” (2012, p. 664). An