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How To Verify That A New Vendor Is Not A Shell Company?

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To verify that a new vendor is not a shell company, businesses should check the vendor’s address with their employee’s addresses as well as ensure the vendor does not have a post office box as the address. Businesses should note red flags of this form of vendor fraud which can include an unusual change in the lifestyle of employees, unauthorized vendors added to a vendor list, and a lack of an online presence of the vendor. Amounts issued just under the review limit should also been seen as red flags. Wells (2001) argues “if the proper checks and balances exist, it is more difficult-though still not impossible-to defraud an organization. Dishonest employees can also use innocent legitimate vendors to commit a billing scheme. In what is …show more content…

Vendor corruption schemes can occur if an employee of a company has an “inappropriate relationship with a vendor involving bribes, gratuities, conflicts of interest, or extortion” (Mansfield, 2017). A common form of corruption that cannot be easily traced through a paper trail occurs in the form of kickbacks, or bribes. A kickback can occur immediately after a contract is signed as well as throughout the time the two companies are doing business. If an employee in a company awards a contract to a vendor that is not offering the most favorable conditions for their company, a kickback in the form of a monetary or non-monetary gifts may be occurring. This vendor may be charging a higher cost, providing poorer quality materials, or even charging without proving services. Yet the vendor secures the contract by unethically influencing the purchasing decisions of the company by offering an individual within the company some form of personal payment. After the contract is signed the vendor may submit invoices for goods and services that they do not intend to complete. The internal employee approves the invoices, pays the vendor, and the vendor gives that employee money or gifts as a kickback. An example of this form of collusion within a North Carolina school system had the transportation department’s supply vendor submitting invoices for goods and services that they did not provide, internal employees approving

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