Essay on Fraud, Waste and Abuse Research Project

The case of Rita Crundwell revolves around a town, other employees, and an auditor 's blind trust in a women, who clearly did not deserve the trust. Crundwell was the town Comptroller. The fraud resulted in 53 million dollars to be siphoned from the town 's funds in a time frame of 20 years. Crundwell covered her tracks with a fake bank account, fake invoices, and the party line of blaming the state for simply being behind on payments. There were many red flags during the two decades of this scheme, but due to the town 's small size and trusting attitude, they relied heavily on external audits, which were not up to par.

In his book, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies do and why they do it, James Q. Wilson’s main objective is to better define the behavior of governmental bureaucracy, believing traditional organizational and economic theory does not adequately explain their actions. Wilson believes that government agencies are doomed to be perceived as inefficient entities by the public. He gives examples of commonly held perceptions of bureaucracies and reveals how these are mostly misconceptions. He points to the environment of bureaucracy, where rules and procedures, dictate goals, along with context, constraints, values, and norms.

Fraud and abuse encompasses the actions of fraud, abuse, and waste in the health care system (McWay, 2014). It is a nationwide problem that affects all of us and can be committed by anyone. Schemes can be committed by a single person or a by an institution or group. The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) estimates that

Getting an internal auditor into the government office was a great move on their part. We can now move forward in this case as we have established that fraud is taking place. The next steps that could be made it to pay close attention to the employees. Any suspicious behavior, such as a sudden eager to work till late at night, or even noticing bad habits like gambling or drug problems could lead someone to steal. Another way to aid against fraud is to control and intensify the paper trail. Make it difficult to be able to get away with cash without recording it and clearing it with someone

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

Duplication is one of the very unnecessary costs that the government ha suffered in its previous operations. GAO is putting in place a cost saving plan that is aimed to improve efficiency and efficacy in the operations. All arm of the government will be direct recipients of the action. GAO, however, need the legislative arm to approve its plan so that it can begin applying the plans efficiently and effectively. GAO has submitted its recommended course of actions that can save the nation considerable that can be channelled to other budgetary allocations. GAO pushed for a constitutional requirement in 2012, which does not allow for incentive payments, but there are challenges in implementation, since there are non-compliant offices and individuals in the public resource offices (GAO 1).

The word “bureaucracy” has a negative connotation to many people. The fact is that our current system of government would not be able to survive without bureaucracies. The bureaucracy has become the “fourth branch” of the government, it has quasi-legislative and judicial powers and in it’s own field its authority is rarely challenged. The presence of these large, inefficient structures is necessary if the American people want to continue receiving the benefits that they expect.

According to Daniel F. Dooley (2008), a member of the Commercial Fraud Taskforce, financial fraud with private middle-market companies is on the rise. In fact, Mr. Dooley believes that he has seen more instances of fraud in the past two years than in the previous ten. He notes seven areas in which financial fraud has increased over the past few years:

Waste Management Inc., hereafter referred to as WMI, was established in 1968by Wayne Huizenga, Dean Buntrock, and Larry Beck. The company provided environmental and waste services in Canada and the United States. By 1990, due to strong growth via operations and acquisitions, WMI grew to become the major waste management company in the region. Unfortunately, actual growth was supported by aggressive accounting policies. However, with the fall of real; growth and profitability, Buntrock and his team started to manipulate financial reports of the company in order to keep its successful appearance (Brook and Dunn, 677).

Fraudulent, erroneous, and illegal acts committed by a public company, usually at a managerial or executive level, have been a very serious problem for many years and have prompted development of strict and updated regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, in an attempt to prevent these occurrences. Unfortunately, these new or updated regulations are not enough to prevent these acts from happening, thus not alleviating the auditors of their responsibility to detect fraud. Some methods that management and auditors can employ to prevent and detect fraud, errors, and illegal acts are: improving knowledge, improving skills,

Fraud is defined as a deliberate misrepresentation that causes a person or business to suffer damages, often in the form of monetary losses through deception or concealment. And Occupational Fraud as defined by the ACFE is the use of one’s occupation for personal enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization’s resources or assets. Traditional fraud triangle theory by Donald Cressey explains that propensity of fraud occurring in an organization lies on three critical elements which are Pressure, Opportunity, and Rationalization.

There is the need to stress improving organizational and processing procedures. This can be done by the use of technology such as e-gov and management information systems. Also, computer and software applications can make a difference in large education systems, unemployment compensation, retraining, welfare-to-work, and monitoring capital construction programs. The importance to maintain and improve productivity of our government programs. It is very important that we improve productivity of government programs. In this economy we need to be able to cut costs wherever possible, this enables us to do so. It also would limit the amount of involvement and confusion it would bring if we don't improve them. The efficiency as we improve will also be developed.

Beginning in the 1980s, many jurisdictions started to seek third-party alternatives to provide public service under the pressure for cost savings and the call for government efficiency. Private organizations are known for their expertise in specific fields – if leverage private sector know-how well, it can bring success to public sector – high quality public services can be delivered with lower costs. Therefore, public organizations can concentrate on solving critical tasks when they contract out the mundane work to private sector. Outsourcing waste management is one of the effective privatization solutions for public organizations given its easy-to-measure nature, and it continues to be popular among local governments. Nevertheless, the success of privatizing government services is not guaranteed. If not manage privatization well, it could result in increased costs, organization structure and culture change or legal liabilities. In addition, take advantage of privatizing public services redefines the nature of government service and governance as it creates a partnership between private and public sector. With the rapid pace of technology development and the obligation of government to spend taxpayer’s money strategically, privatizing government services has gained unstoppable momentum.

As the government has continued to grow larger and more complex, waste, fraud, and abuse have prospered. There are six common methods of stealing from the government such as ghosting, bid rigging, “honest” graft, diversion, shoddy material, and kickbacks. Every method mentioned has its unique procedures, but at the end they end up with the same result which is to steal from the government. According to Starling (2011), ghosting is theft through phantom resources- that is receiving payments for resources not actually delivered. An example of ghosting would be to put a ghost employee in a payroll in an agency, and getting a check for somebody that does not work there.

The operation of public organizations need to spend considerable amounts of financial and material support (Dixit, 1997). The administrative expenditure of government covers everyday expenses (the payment of payroll and office expenses) and capital expenditures (the procurement of office supplies and the build of public