Former employee pleads guilty to misusing city credit card!

[Anonymous]

There's got to be a better way to keep these accounted for, no?  I wonder how often they have their audits...

http://www.abc15.com/news/state/former-kingman-employee-pleads-guilty-to-using-city-credit-card

[K-in-Boston]

Wow. She misappropriated $900k yet the $100k on the credit card was the attention-grabbing headline? Sounds like someone has a bit of a gambling issue pieced together with the casino cash advances.

[Anonymous]

The thing that gets me is the length of time this went on before it was caught. Serious lack of internal checks and balances, no doubt. 

[Anonymous]

I wonder if this happened before at a different company but never got caught.  What her title was and how she was trusted with such a big credit line.

[Anonymous]

It's not necessarily a lack of checks and balances that is the problem.

I work in Accounting. I've had an employee once take the company for a good $50k over 3-4 years. Her position required the highest monthly credit card spend of anyone in the company. She found out how to get past our multiple levels of checks/balances, knew how to forge receipts/backup for her charges, mostly stayed on budget as to not cause any noticeable overspends. The level of crafty deception was actualy quite remarkable. Her expense reports went through two approvers before making it to me in Accounting and made it past EVERYONE. She essentially got behind in her duties towards the end which caused other folks to start jumping into her work. Once they started seeing things, I pulled the thread and it all unraveled. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your post, SteelerNYC. I guess my question would be how charges posted to her actual credit card statement could be explained away by forged receipts. I'm not questioning that it happened, but charges on CC statements are what they are.

[Anonymous]

Two scenarios were happening:

1) Charges were from vendors that the company uses, but the purchases were for her personally. (i.e. restaurant, airline, hotel)

2) Sometimes the merchant name that comes through on a credit card statement doesn't quite match the vendor name that you know them by. I think she was testing some of the places she spent company $$ with her personal card first and knew how they'd show up on a statement.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Two scenarios were happening:

1) Charges were from vendors that the company uses, but the purchases were for her personally. (i.e. restaurant, airline, hotel)

2) Sometimes the merchant name that comes through on a credit card statement doesn't quite match the vendor name that you know them by. I think she was testing some of the places she spent company $$ with her personal card first and knew how they'd show up on a statement.

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These two scenarios are accurate, but how could she get away with the below?

Authorities learned that Richards misused the city credit card to pay for personal expenses including payments to her cell phone, utility and car insurance bills. Im guessing these would fall under your scenario that she had these personal bills with the same vendor as the company?

She had also used the credit card to pay off cash advances taken out at multiple casinos. How could she get away with this one? I don't think the company woulvd have/use a casino vendor?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Two scenarios were happening:

1) Charges were from vendors that the company uses, but the purchases were for her personally. (i.e. restaurant, airline, hotel)

2) Sometimes the merchant name that comes through on a credit card statement doesn't quite match the vendor name that you know them by. I think she was testing some of the places she spent company $$ with her personal card first and knew how they'd show up on a statement.

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Thanks! That makes sense. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

Two scenarios were happening:

1) Charges were from vendors that the company uses, but the purchases were for her personally. (i.e. restaurant, airline, hotel)

2) Sometimes the merchant name that comes through on a credit card statement doesn't quite match the vendor name that you know them by. I think she was testing some of the places she spent company $$ with her personal card first and knew how they'd show up on a statement.

---

These two scenarios are accurate, but how could she get away with the below?

Authorities learned that Richards misused the city credit card to pay for personal expenses including payments to her cell phone, utility and car insurance bills. Im guessing these would fall under your scenario that she had these personal bills with the same vendor as the company?

She had also used the credit card to pay off cash advances taken out at multiple casinos. How could she get away with this one? I don't think the company woulvd have/use a casino vendor?

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I could see where lots of businesses have vendor accounts with casinos since casinos provide so many different services these days, hotel, restaurant, etc. It's just the cash advance part that surprised me, unless it doesn't show as a cash advance on the statement.