Homesoon Helps Solve Fraud Problems

Homesoon Accounting Services "We'll Get You Home Soon"

Homesoon Helps Solve Fraud Problems

Most business owners that have fraud problems don't know until it's too late.

(Names have been changed to protect the innocent.)

THE SAINTLY SINNER

Phil was the elder of the church and had been attending there for 20 plus years. If any were to ask, he was above reproach, his father's father had been a charter member of the congregation, so it was no big deal to put him in charge of the offering and collections.

What few in the church knew was that Phil was in dire need of money. He had lost his job and faced losing his house to foreclosure. To offset those bills, Phil had begun stealing from the church offerings. He was the sole person who counted, collected and deposited the weekly offerings. Some checks he was able to convert to his own use, but it was much easier once he opened a separate bank account under the name of the church and used the inocuous label of "Collections Fund" to explain the amounts going in to the account.

No one in the church ever suspected in the eleven years he was in charge of finances that he was a thief.

Statistucs show that most embezzlers are faithful church attenders, usually males, and they always intend to pay the money back someday. ANYONE is capable of stealing, the lesson to learn here is that even if the business is one devoted to God's work, even Jesus had a disciple who was stealing out of the till, it can happen to any church or organization with weak internal controls.

THE DAYCARE

Monique had owned her child care business for seven years, she and Helen her partner had built up the business and had an exclusive contract with a local school that kept them full every day. Monique and Helen were the best of friends and got along fantastically, they even had spoken of expanding their business to get into a bigger building. Helen's parents had run into some financial difficulties and she tried to help them which had put her into some serious troubles too. Monique never knew about the problems Helen was having as Helen kept it all to herself.

Monique had made the same mistake a lot of business owners make and did not have a dual signature requirement for withdrawing money from their business account, Helen had slowly bled the account dry and one day vanished with the last $6000 in the account. Monique was forced to close her business because she didn't have enough money to pay the staff, nor any of the other monthly bills that were coming.

To this day, Helen has not been found.

But all of this could have been avoided with a fraud prevention checklist from Home-soon Accounting.

THE AUTO REPAIR STORE

Miguel had owned his store for years and never gave a thought to fraud, thinking that other than the occassional cash register pilferer, that he didn't need to know any more about fraud than just to hire the right person.

An analysis of his stock, where an oil filter here and an air filter there always seemed to come up short revealed that on the specific days he took off, his assistant manager was changing oil and making repairs with Miguel's stock, and pocketing the cash. Miguel was losing out on the cost of the inventory, on the time he was paying his assistant manager to work and on the profit he could have been making from repairs that weren't being made while the 'free' oil changes were being done. After totaling the losses, Miguel could have paid another two managers full time to be there when he wasn't. All this could have been avoided with a little fraud prevention checklist.

Bob's Electronic Store

Bob had always dreamed of owning his own electronics store, and when the location became available he had dreamed about, he took it as a "sign" and signed the lease. He refinanced his home during the real estate value explosion and purchased his inventory stock. He was one of the first non-box stores in his area to sell the HD televisions.

One day a rather handsomely dressed individual walked in and spoke with Bob about one of the more expensive models of HD televisions. The man was extremely interested and purchased the television right then. Bob's policy was to deliver these items for free to prevent damages en route but the man had a truck and insisted that he take the set with him now.

Looking back, Bob saw the intensity of this man who just wanted the television NOW. He paid with a credit card and left with the television, it wasn't a week later that Bob received notice that the credit card had been a counterfeited one complete with the magnetic strip information cloned and put onto this fake card. "It looked real, and the payment processed." Bob was out several thousand dollars and all he had was a fake address for his customer.

THIS COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED!

Home-soon Accounting helps prevent fraud!

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