I’m freaking amazed that at the same time school costs are going up, the university I attend has an employee pulling this stunt! I read the story a few times over and it seems to me that as far as the school goes, there are six things that should’ve already been in place to prevent this from even happening:
[ol][li]Verify credit cards issued against current employee listing, and mandate periodic checks of issued cards against empoyee listing[/li][li]Have another person double-check the first person’s list[/li][li]Require someone a tad higher than clerk to check questionable charges.[/li][li]Require department heads to verify travel orders/other requisitions–especially if the charge is for someone who doesn’t work there now![/li][li]BEFORE getting a card issued, require hard copy of application with both applicant’s signature and department head’s signature on it. This, of course, will be used for periodic checks.[/li][li]Periodically send a list of open accounts to the deparment head for verification of employee’s currency (status, not coin).[/ol][/li]What am I missing? Does anything on this list go too far?
As to the employee:
[ol][li]QUIT GAMBLING WITH THE STATE’S MONEY![/li][li]You got medical problems? Then go to the doctor AND NOT THE FREAKING CASINO![/ol][/li]What am I missing? Etc.
Well, there are way too many steps, first of all - especially if you are on as tight a budget as we are here at the U of TN (note: I am a student, not an employee and I do not represent UT in any other way). Of course, we just had a president resign after doing things like…purchasing a $4,000 grill on his university credit card.
The main thing to fix the problem where you are, (speaking as a former internal auditor), would be some sort of control - that’s where the weakness came from and if you have someone “dirty”, then they will find and at least try to exploit the weaknesses available to them.
All credit card charges/bills must be approved by the employee’s immediate supervisor before payment is made, OR do like the last company I worked for - make arrangements for company charge cards to be issued to the employees in their name - in an arrangement like this, you end up limiting the number of cards to those who actually need them (maybe 1 per department, but some departments will need more). If the employee goes out and maxes out their card, it affects their credit rating.
With the cards in the employee’s name, you have to realize that there will be a delay between the charge and the statement. Therefore, employees can submit expense reports to their supervisor/department head for approval if the charge receipts are attached. At the same time, require the signatures of the employee and the department head before the card can be issued in the first place.
Finally, the internal audit department has to periodically audit credit card expenses. It should be their job to obtain a list of current employees from HR, a list of people issued credit cards from the treasurer (or whoever handles the cards there), pull both lists into an excel spreadsheet make sure that those on the credit card list appear on the HR list. Then, the audit department should be reviewing those with large amounts charged to their cards, and checking others at random (say the top 25 spenders, then a judgemental selection of other card users). This should identify anyone using cards issued in the name of former employees - and should ideally ferret out anyone submitting false expenses.
Implementing the proper controls will help to prevent the same or other fraud from occurring in the future.
Good points, Lsura. The cards are issued in the employee’s names. I think perhaps a nifty idea would be to have it so that the statements would be issued to both the person named on the card and to the department.
I’ve no idea what the procedures the school follows, as I’m not an employee–I’m a student. I was just listing what I thought would prevent the kind of stuff that crook did.
The other victims besides the school were the three individuals whose identities she stole, so I’m guessing that there is probably some kind of fallout on their credit report, albeit nothing derogatory because the crook’s bills were paid with university funds.