Employees stealing customer payments and other receipts has been the hottest area for employee thefts in my past few years experience. Here’s yet another example.
Setting up a bank account in the name of your employer, or a name similar to your employer, at a bank not used by your employer, is a common method for employees with access to customer payments and other receipts to divert the funds. How the diversion of the payments is concealed is where you will detect these fraud schemes.
Unfortunately banking has changed in recent years, and opening bank accounts is no longer needed to divert the payments and cash customer payments payable to the business.
I’d love to tell you more on how it is being done today without opening bank accounts, but doing so could provide someone with sufficient knowledge to actually steal funds, and I won’t provide a road map for a successful scheme.
Woman sentenced to 9 years in embezzlement
Salinas woman was sentenced Tuesday to nine years and four months in prison for embezzling more than $615,000 from her employer, Keith Day Trucking and Landscape Supply.
Over a two-year period ending in January, Karen Benson, 38, rerouted customers’ checks into two accounts with a made-up business name – Keith Day Sand and Gravel, according to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office.
Benson’s actions nearly caused her employer to go under, the District Attorney’s Office said.
Besides the prison sentence, Superior Court Judge Timothy Roberts ordered Benson to pay full restitution to Keith Day Trucking and Landscape Supply and imposed a $250,000 fine under a statute prohibiting the type of money laundering she committed.
She pleaded July 22 to one count of embezzlement and one count of money laundering.
Prosecutors said Benson had no prior criminal record.
www.thecalifornian.com