I started a new job in February and recently discovered the fact that the person before me was stealing cash.
I informed my boss and he has opened a case with the local prosecutor. Now I have to go back and recap an entire year of work to show the theft. It’s a ton of work and I’ve been struggling with the best way to get this done. The prosecutor made a point to say that none of his people are accountants, so it needs to be simple to understand.
So, what do I need to show him? Do I have to show “how” he did it or just “that” he did it? Is that a clear question or do I need to explain that more?
Presumably you have to show that:
(a) money belonging to the employer went missing
(b) reasonable proof the “missing” was engineered by the perp
(c) where the money went - hopefully, to the perp.
Presumably the guy was not stupid enough to write himself cheques. So you may show “money went to bogus company X” and the police would have to use their powers to trace the money from there to the accused.
I assume the problem is the guy used some complex accounting tricks to hide his trail, so they want a bit of detail on how he did it that a jury could understand.
I have been through this, and I understand how much work it is. With my case, the person had used about seven different methods to steal money and some were pretty complex and hard for a non-accountant to follow.
In one incident, the woman replaced cash with a $1,860 check to the company - she took the cash but did not record the check on the books. The prosecutor chose that one to prosecute because it was over the $1,500 misdemeanor limit (so it was a felony) and because it was easy to explain. In other words, he used the simplest crime to prosecute and for leverage. During her plea negotiations ALL the evidence was on hand and she was ordered to make restitution for the entire amount stolen.
I would lay out everything to the prosecutor, and let him decide how to proceed. In my case this took several hours, and I had receipts, bank statements and financial records that proved the thefts.
I also showed him where the company’s internal controls were weak, such as the fact that this woman had control over deposits, the mail, and the financial records.
I was trying to balance the sales tax and found an entire days worth of receipts not entered. From there, I started looking at every day of that month to see if he had combined a couple days. But that’s not what I found.
Instead I began to see that the cash portion of the revenue was often $20.00 to $300.00 less than it was supposed to be. He would decrease the cash by an even dollar amount, back out the sales tax and then enter the data with his new figures.
At issue for me is that we are talking about a lot of data with a bunch of different account numbers and classes. Looking at all of that would probably just confuse most people. On weekend days, the supporting paperwork can number over 100 pages and he did this almost every day for 10 months or so.
Do you think I have to show that the entire day in minute detail or would it be enough to just show what the revenue side was supposed to be vs what he showed it to be and then briefly the sales accounts he altered? Will they need copies of every day or just a representative amount of days? Do I need to show all of his work or just the days he changed?
I’ll ask the prosecutor all of these questions of course, but my boss wants me to have at least one month of work prepped before we go see him.