In circumstances with proper measures in place, a fraud scheme can be completely prevented or at the very least be discovered sooner than it would be otherwise.
This was not the case for a surrogacy agency and affiliated law firm at which Destiny McKayla Combs was the Accounting Manager for approximately nine years. The scheme was not discovered until 2022 when the company’s owner agreed to sell the surrogacy agency to Combs prior to his retirement in 2023. As the sale approached Combs suddenly quit and moved to Florida.
This led to an investigation which revealed between February 2019 and June 2023, Combs embezzled approximately $2.72 million from her former employer. The method of fraud was simple; Combs used her personal credit cards to fund a gambling addiction and then used access to the funds of her former employer to pay the bills for her personal credit cards.
To disguise the payments Combs altered company reports allowing her scheme to go on for years due to the trust and autonomy she held. Over the course of the scheme Combs made approximately 292 payments from the company accounts to her personal American Express credit card for $2,723,025.
Combs held a high position of trust and was even on course to purchase the company from her employer. However, the lack of oversight in addition to trust emboldened her to embezzle funds unnoticed and eventually led to her arrest and sentencing. In the future her former employer will assuredly require more frequent reviews and audits of company accounts and payments.
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