.....and other random stuff......

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

How to Commit Fraud…or not

The two bookkeepers were young mothers.
They were always complaining about money and their lack thereof. About how expensive everything was. How the kids were just money drains. How their husbands were lazy and didn’t help.
Yadda yadda yadda.

Suddenly, one day we noticed their complaining stopped. And shortly after they stopped complaining they started showing up with new stuff.
New expensive clothes.
New designer purses and shoes.
Jewelry.
At Christmas time they went out on their lunch hours and came back with bags overflowing with all sorts of goodies for their kids.

Their explanation was the lazy husbands had finally gotten jobs. 
Seemed plausible.
This went on for quite some time.

Then just as suddenly their money troubles were back.
Turns out their plan for funding their money scheme was ‘floating’ their credit cards.
But you can only do that for so long until you have to make an actual PAYMENT. Once they maxed out their credit limits they had nowhere else to ‘float’.

I guess they hadn’t really thought it through.

They started borrowing money from anyone and everyone they knew.
Getting deeper and deeper into debt.

They never said which one of them had the ‘light bulb’ moment. But at the time it seemed like a good idea.
They always meant to pay it back…….
After all, they were the bookkeepers.
How hard could it be to pad the numbers here and there and pocket the extra cash?

They got away with it for some time.
I guess they just never thought about the company auditors.

The funniest part of this whole story is when they were caught they were never prosecuted or fired.
They were just demoted to operator (I told you it was the lowest of low jobs in the company, lol) and allowed to keep working.


I assume the company allowed them to keep working so they could pay back what they had embezzled. 
And possibly to save face……if it ever came out that the HUGE COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY had been duped by a couple of high school educated bookkeepers it would have NOT been good for their image! 

6 comments:

  1. So who were these bookkeepers? I remember my sister teaching me in my early years of marriage, to add a bit to every check I wrote at the grocery store. My husband wouldn't notice and I'd have some money to spend on the kids or buy a treat with.

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  2. Put money in some people's path and they are tempted. Fortunately most are honest.

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  3. Wow,they were lucky they weren't prosecuted. How did the operators feel about them being demoted to operator?

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  4. My sense of righteous indignation thinks they should've been fired!

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  5. I wonder if they realized what a lucky escape they had.

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  6. wow...they were lucky! Stupid...but lucky.

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