9
May/114

High Speed Impact of Race Car Into Tree: As We Watched It Happen

Working on an ambulance for the past 15 years, I have seen the results of many accidents and incidents, a few bad ones, but never observed them as they occurred.  That is until yesterday.

A car traveling like a race car through the neighborhood in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.  Kids (my kids, nieces and nephews) playing on the sidewalk near the street, cars parked in the street out front with relatives getting into them, and along comes the race car, again!  The second time since I arrived, potentially the fourth time in total total.  Each time you could hear it coming.

With the sound much like the Indy 500, the driver races at top speed past the house, skids and slides in the street two houses down, and proceeds to spin around in the street, smoking the tires with his engine blarring.  Off like a bullet, the driver skids again, spins 180 degrees, and continues.  Spinning once again, he continues to race the engine, spin the tires, pour off smoke and screams away.  All with the kids standing less than fifty to a hundred feet away, to as close as the width of the street away as he approaches the house.

As the race car attempts to speed away, crossing past the kids, the relatives getting into their car parked in front, and all the neighbors watching what he was doing, the tires grab and instantly the car lurches out of control and into a large tree, causing instant destruction of the car.  Right across the street (twenty or so feet) from my kids in the front yard and the parked cars in front of the house.

Expecting the driver to be impacted, we were all amazed when the driver crawled out of what was left of his Camaro race car, head bleeding, and ran through the backyard where he proceeded to run through the woods along the highway.  State and local police, along with their tracking dog… never caught him.

To see it live, up close and personal was surreal.

Filed under Beyond Fraud 4 Comments »

3
Apr/1126

The Embezzler – starring Charles Victor.

Flashback – London, July 1954.  Henry Paulson (Charles Victor), a lead cashier in a small bank, has spent his entire life at the same bank, performing the same duties, married to the same person, performing the same daily routines – day in and day out.  Nearing his late 50s, Henry is presented with a bleak medical prognosis.  Distracted by flashy travel posters, Henry finds himself day dreaming about traveling to France, to live an exciting life – something he has never done, before he dies.

One day Paulson steals the bank vault’s contents (not exactly an embezzlement), and nervously escapes to France, constantly looking over his shoulder with fear of being caught.  He checks into a rooming house where another guest is busy fleecing fellow guests.  Paulson detects exactly what he is doing and is all over it – warning the guests to be cautious.  It seemed as if Henry would never lead the exciting life he dreamed with his stolen money, until he used some of the funds to help another guest (being extorted by the man).  For his next act of charity, he sponsored a party for orphans, something that clearly made him happy.  Shortly thereafter detectives catch up with him at the home, and he died from his ailment – having spent only a fraction of the stolen funds.

The book this movie was based upon was much more in tune to an embezzlement by a bank employee in 1947.  The story as told through Paulson was quite different from the storyline in the book.  However, it was a pleasure to travel back in time to the early 1950s, and watch how the bookkeeping was maintained for the bank.  The irony here was that there were checks and balances of their manually-maintained books and records – at the beginning and end of each day, one employee reviewed and reconciled the others’ work.  In each scene, the safe was always opened by two employees.

One could only wonder what would have happened if Paulson simply skimmed funds on a regular basis and forced the ledgers to balance.  It seemed clear the other employees as well as the manager trusted Henry, as he had been at the bank for so long (31 years).  Henry was given a poor prognosis and a short time to live, and in response took a large amount easily and quickly noticed by the manager.  Had Henry been given more time, I am confident he could have accomplished his theft, retired off to France, and the loss would have likely gone undetected.  That would have made it more consistent with a common embezzlement scheme by a trusted employee versus a robbery.

Here’s the URL to the movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121241/

Filed under Beyond Fraud 26 Comments »

10
Mar/1123

Less and less surprise me these days… :-(

NUN Accused of Embezzling $850,000 From College, Then Gambling It Away in Atlantic City

“A Catholic nun broke one of the Ten Commandments by embezzling $850,000 from a suburban New York City college and gambling it away in Atlantic City, according to federal prosecutors.”

To read the entire story, here’s the link:

Filed under Battle on Fraud 23 Comments »

9
Mar/1121

Taking Responsibility

Last week a parcel delivery truck raced down our street, a very short street with three houses on each side.  I remembered it from every other night because the truck was traveling so fast, and right in front of my house, there was a loud bang as he passed.  I looked out to see if the truck had hit something, but I saw nothing and the truck continued down the street as if nothing happened.

The next morning my neighbor met me at the end of my driveway in tears.  He informed me that last night a parcel truck struck and killed his dog, right in front of him while he was outside playing with the dog.  The truck never stopped or acknowledged hitting anything.  The dog was known and favored by all of our neighbors, and the family is devastated.

Later that day a parcel truck delivered a package to my house.  As the driver exited his truck, I met him in the driveway.  I asked him if he was the same driver from the previous night, and he indicated he was.  I asked him if anything unusual occurred as he passed my house the previous night, and he indicated nothing unusual.

I told him as he passed my house the night before, there was a loud bang, loud enough that I heard it as did my other neighbor who was in his house.  He then acknowledged that he remembered hearing something, but thought that a package had fallen in the back of his truck.

I informed him that the loud sound he had heard was his truck striking and killing my neighbor’s dog.

A week has gone by, and the same driver has been delivering packages to our neighborhood since I spoke with him.  While not necessarily his fault that the dog was killed by his truck, one would think he would be gracious enough to either stop at their house and talk with them, or send them a note or something acknowledging what happened and their loss.

Nothing.

Worse, his racing down our street has not stopped.  One would have thought after learning that he struck and killed a dog that he should slow down, especially since there are small children playing in our neighborhood, but that hasn’t resignated with him either.

Filed under In General 21 Comments »

22
Feb/1129

Embezzlements: More Frequent or Better Detect Rate?

I use Google alerts with the key word “embezzlement.”  Google send me emails throughout the day with links to any News stories that appear regarding embezzlement.

I receive anywhere from six to twelve emails, every day, with anywhere from one to five story links within each email.  Many of the stories involve someone being arrested or charged with embezzlement, and the amounts range from thousands of dollars to multi-millions.  The stories also span the globe, with today’s links featuring an embezzlement by a revenue collector in the Fiji Islands, a low level official from China who fled to Canada allegedly with $14 million in embezzled funds, and two individuals in South Korea accused of embezzling $20.6 million.

Today’s links also included a Red Cross chapter, yet another volunteer fire department, and numerous bookkeepers and other individuals within companies here in the United States.

The statistic widely recognized in the fraud community is one in nine (1/9) fraud cases become publicly known, which means for every Google alert I receive, there are eight more that I should receive.  Google doesn’t know about those cases, and never will.  My experience has been this statistic is reasonably accurate.  Most cases are quietly settled and resolved.  Many victim organizations would prefer avoiding the negative publicity that could accompany the news article, and in some cases the publicity could pose a greater negative impact to the organization than the theft itself.  In many cases the embezzled funds are gone, eliminating any change of recovery or restitution from the suspect.  Insurance is the common source of recovery, and once paid, the claim is subrogated to the insurance company to recover from the suspect.  It is also common for the potential cost of the investigation to exceed the potential theft itself, bringing a potential investigation to a quick end.

Given the frequency of Google alerts I have received in the last six months, the question is this: is there more theft and stealing going on today, or are systems and procedures in place to better identify and detect these schemes when they occur, increasing the detection rate as opposed to the incident rate?

Here’s a link to Google News “embezzlement” for today:

http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=embezzlement

Filed under Battle on Fraud 29 Comments »

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