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Spike’s Transport: Collusion schemes; defeating segregation of duties; fraud; forensic accounting

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Spike's Transport

Spike's Transport is in the business of move. Spike has a fleet of trucks and drives who are all insured and licensed.

Spike has noticed that during the last year three of his employees: Sam 28YOA worked for the company for 5 years as Sales Representative works with various vendors and contracts, Cindy 33YOA worked for the company for 10 years as CPA in charge of approving and processing vendor contracts/payments AR/AP Supervisor, and Anita 30YOA worked for the company for 7 years as CPA in charge of payroll/insurance department. All take off at the same time-the three employees were never very friendly prior to this year. All three work in different areas of the business.

While contracts are up Spike has noticed an increase in the costs of insurance and payroll costs and a decrease in accounts receivable payments. Accidents have increased slightly since last year and health insurance claims have also increased. Revenues are down.

Where would you start to investigate the fraud, what would you look for and who would you look at and why?

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Solution Summary

The discussion indicates the starting point and three potential schemes. After discussing these, the key employees for each scheme are suggested.

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The first step in a fraud investigation is to look for the signs of the fraud triangle. The fraud triangle is (1) pressure, (2) opportunity and (3) rationalization. All frauds have these three aspects present so when you find these, it is "smoking" (suspicious) and could be "fire" (fraud). So, let's look at the story. ...

Solution provided by:
Carol Sargent, PhD
Education
  • BSc, University of Virginia
  • MSc, University of Virginia
  • PhD, Georgia State University
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