Fraudulent Disbursements – Billing Schemes and Payroll Schemes

More in the series on getting to know the fraud tree better. To get a better sense of where we are on the fraud tree and which branch we are talking about in this newsletter, please see the entire fraud tree at http://www.acfe.com/fraud-tree.aspx.

Learn to do good;
seek justice, correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow’s cause.
Isaiah 1:17

Misappropriating cash through fraudulent disbursements is a sizable portion of the fraud tree because there is a lot of room for creativity.  See an illustration of the fraud tree here: http://www.acfe.com/fraud-tree.aspx   In this newsletter, we will cover billing schemes & payroll schemes.  In future newsletters we will cover expense reimbursement schemes, check tampering, and register disbursements.  Five creative categories under fraudulent disbursements in all!

With fraudulent disbursements, the fraudster causes an organization to disburse funds through some trick or device such as submitting false invoices or forging checks.  The disbursement is often disguised as a legitimate business activity so that it can slide through the accounting system undetected by controls.

And with these sorts of schemes, the fraudster is usually caught when they get too bold or too greedy.  If they would just keep it small, they could supplement their income for decades!

Billing Schemes

Here the fraudster creates a valid looking bill and causes the organization to issue payment for the fraudster’s personal benefit. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners classifies billing schemes into three categories:

1. Shell companies
2. Non-accomplice vendors
3. Personal purchases

Shell Companies 

In this creative scenario, the fraudster creates a fake company that has a valid sounding name and then sends checks from the victim company to their fake, or shell, company.

In my hometown, LouAnne Aponte stole over $800,000 from a large not-for-profit, Family Connections, for which she was the executive director. For six years she forged a well-known local CPA firm’s name on audit reports to avoid questioning by auditors and to satisfy federal grant requirements.

In March 1993, Aponte formed a business named Excite and Challenge, and then paid Excite and Challenge from Family Connections funds.  She used the money to pay her mortgage for a home in a tony Austin neighborhood and bought herself a convertible Mercedes.

For a decade LouAnne Aponte also volunteered as the treasurer for the Texas Association of Child Care Resources and Referral Agencies.  Aponte was accused of stealing over $100,000 from that organization.

Aponte had a history of theft dating back to the 1980s when she stole about $60,000 from two employers. In 1987, she served only four months of a four-year prison sentence for her crimes. Unaware of Aponte’s past, the nonprofit Austin Families hired Aponte in 1990 when she was still on parole.

Having served only two and a half years of her 25-year sentence for the crimes against Family Connections, Aponte was up for parole in May 2013.[1]

Straw students are like shell companies, aren’t they?

Creating fake students has always been a popular scam when it comes to milking money out of student financial aid programs.  When you actually see students in a classroom in college environments, it is hard to keep a scammer from succeeding – but how do you verify online students?

Between 2006 and 2009, Trenda Halton defrauded Rio Salada College in Arizona for over a half a million dollars.  Having discovered how to defraud the registration system of Rio Salado College, Halton worked with four accomplices to create 136 “straw” students.

In her scheme, she recruited “straw” students who prepared and filed bogus admissions applications, financial aid applications, and Pell Grant applications in the students’ names. The financial-aid recipients received aid money after Rio Salada deducted tuition.

Halton’s cover was blown when a Rio Salado employee noticed that the applications all had the same handwriting and the students were enrolled in the same classes. In 2009, Halton was indicted with 64 other defendants and charged with offenses such as conspiracy, mail fraud, financial aid fraud, and making false statements in connection with financial aid.

Rio Salada’s small distance learning college was a prime digital target for Halton. Other colleges that have been victimized by online financial-aid fraudsters include the University of Phoenix’s Axia College, Michigan’s Lansing Community College, and Texas’ Dallas County Community College.[2]

Non-Accomplice Vendors

My small business has several names, and I have been married 15 times.  OK, OK, I have wed only twice.  But I have three last names!  And the bank will take any check from me using any of my last names or business names.

A banker in one of my classes told me that the bank doesn’t check endorsements or names on the check if the amount is under $10,000.  The volume of checks is just too high for them to watch.  Banks also put on the back of your bank statement that you have 60 days from the date of the statement to resolve any discrepancy, otherwise the bank is not responsible.

So imagine taking a valid vendor name – say ABC Pest Control – that your organization would spend money on and changing the address on the payment to your own PO Box.  And if you have already succeeded depositing checks under ABC Enterprises, the bank will take it. You will enjoy the money, and your organization probably won’t know the difference.

Personal Purchases

Whether personal purchases are considered fraud by an organization depends on the type of organization.  In the corporate environment, use of the company credit card to buy golf equipment while entertaining clients could be perfectly valid.

In government, we never entertain!  OK, we seldom entertain, but governments would seldom find the purchase of golf equipment valid.  Remember our discussion about what fraud is, what abuse is, and whether something is worthy of the attention of those in charge of governance? That applies to personal purchases, big time.

But HP wasn’t as lenient with their money as some other corporations.  They ousted their CEO, Mark Hurd, in 2010 for expense report irregularities and for hiring a model/actress that he had a personal relationship with to represent HP at trade shows for $5000 to $10,000 a pop.[3]

Payroll Schemes

Another way employees can extract money from their employers using a false disbursement scheme is to make false claims for compensation.  The fraud tree is divided into four parts under payroll schemes:

1. Ghost employees
2. Commission schemes
3. Workers compensation
4. Falsified wages

Ghost Employees

In this scheme, the government is charged for employee wages for fake employees or, if you prefer, “phantom” employees.

Do you remember Paul Bremer? He was the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the transitional Iraqi government. In 2007, Bremer acknowledged to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that during the 2003 to 2004 rebuilding of Iraq, for which he was responsible, America had paid nonexistent “ghost employees.”

Bremer suggested that the organization feared the consequences of stopping payments to determine who were truly employed. Those who were employed supplied the Iraqi ministries with security, and Bremer did not want to anger these 74,000 armed men.

The problem of the “ghost” employees was just one piece of the puzzle of the missing $8.8 billion that the CPA distributed to Iraqi ministries. Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction stated that the problem was not a major reason that so much money was unaccounted for. He blamed the lack of transparency for the missing funds.[4]

Commission Schemes

The Pyramid

Although I can’t imagine this happening in government, or that a commission/pyramid would be relevant in government, you may have personally been the victim of a pyramid scheme in your past.  In a pyramid scheme, the fraudster promises consumers or investors large profits if they can recruit others to join the program.  Some schemes purport to sell a product, but the product is really just a cover for the pyramid.

Victims of a pyramid scheme are often asked to inventory load – or buy stock inventory of a product in order to sell.  In this way, the company does make profit, and the folks on the top of the pyramid profit, but the front-line salesmen are stuck with a bunch of inventory they can’t sell!

Also beware of claims that the product is selling like hotcakes!  Who is buying the hotcakes: actual customers or just players in the pyramid?[5]

A few cautions about marketing ‘spin’!

I remember my mother buying a horrible car – a Ford Taurus – in the 90s because the dealer told her it was the best selling car in America.  Yes, it was, but only because Ford made incredible deals to get the rental car industry to buy beaucoup of them. Consumers hated the car and for good reason.  Ah, marketing spin wins again!

A well known vitamin company in the US is advertising that they are the first vitamin company to get clearance from an organization they say is an independent evaluator of vitamin quality.  Only problem is that the vitamin company founded, funds, and shares staff with this independent evaluator.

And it isn’t just creative Americans: Customer complaints against four of the United Kingdom’s largest energy firms led to an investigation of nPower, Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern Energy, and EDF Energy by the energy regulator Ofgem.

Many of the complaints were against door-to-door salespeople and telemarketers who were persuading customers to switch suppliers. Customers were given misleading information and quotes, which resulted in the customers being in worse positions than before switching suppliers.

Confirming the customer complaints, Ofgem’s 2008 investigation showed that changing firms at the persuasion of pushy door salespeople left almost half of gas customers and electricity customers worse off.

As of September 2010, energy regulators were considering fining suppliers a portion of their annual revenue if customer complaints proved true.[6]

A bit about the the Ponzi

Although a Ponzi scheme is not specifically mentioned on the fraud tree, it is definitely worth talking about!  A Ponzi scheme is similar to a pyramid scheme, except there is no product to sell, and the schemer doesn’t pay a commission to salespeople to find new recruits. A Ponzi schemer uses the money from new recruits to pay existing members.

The most notorious Ponzi schemer of our day is Bernie Madoff who defrauded investors out of $60 billion.  Madoff paid investors significant returns using money he collected from new investors, which he never truly invested.

Enticing new investors by paying his investors more money allowed Madoff to keep the scheme rolling for about two, maybe three, decades. Madoff told investors that their investments were earning high returns and would give them large payouts to keep them onboard.

While he probably believed that his venture could last forever, it couldn’t withstand the decline of the stock market. In 2008, he could no longer keep up his lie. Investors weren’t paid on time because of his inability to yield sufficient cash out of his holdings.

On March 10, 2009, Bernie Madoff was charged with eleven felony charges including securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, false filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), and theft from an employee benefit plan.  On June 29, 2009, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison.[7]

Workers Compensation

I like to work, don’t you?  I like to get something done and create new things.  But not everyone is motivated to create – some people think the world owes them a living, and false workers comp claims are an easy route to income without exertion.

It makes me very sad to see a video on 60 minutes of a guy moving a piano who has been claiming workers comp for three years.  Can you imagine being related to that guy? How could he, and you, stand it?

Here is an executive summary from a report by the GAO on fraudulent benefits:

Falsified Wages

Here is a report from the NY Attorney General regarding contractors who falsified employee wages:

Next time… more on fraudulent disbursement schemes including expense reimbursement schemes.