Fraud can be perpetrated by individuals at various levels of a company’s hierarchy – from those in management of board positions to administrative assistants. Such was the case for a family-owned company in South Lake Tahoe.
Over the course of almost four years, a construction company was unknowingly the victim of embezzlement allegedly due to the dishonesty of office assistant Elois Power. From November 2019 to May 2023, Ms. Power worked as an office assistant and during her employment Ms. Power allegedly embezzled more than $1.4 million dollars from the company.
By disguising more than $700,000.00 of ACH transfers as payments made to vendors the company worked with and creating fake profiles with the same names of company vendors, fake vendors the company did not work with, or as payments for payroll or reimbursements, the scheme was not immediately noticeable. Ms. Power also allegedly used the company’s credit card to make personal purchases and pay on her own personal credit cards in addition to using the stolen money to purchase property, luxury cars, and a horse.
Separation of ability to pay, recording of payments, and reconciling purposes of payments mitigates the likelihood of these kinds of losses by verifying the legitimacy of invoices and other payments owed to vendors. This would have created concerns regarding payments to unknown companies and lessened the severity of the loss.
Photo by Mikhail Nilov
