Employee theft can sometimes occur in the form of employees taking excess pay in addition to legitimate wages.
This can happen in forms such as manipulating company systems to gain unearned commissions or creating additional paychecks for themselves or ghost employees. Theft is especially common if there is little to no separation of duties and authority to account for, receive, and/or expend assets.
A woman names Leann Marie Rouse was hired as a bookkeeper in July 2011 for a trucking company in Traer, Iowa. Due to bookkeeping responsibilities Ms. Rouse had access to, and control of, the trucking company’s financial accounting software for handling payroll. Using this access Ms. Rouse allegedly issued approximately 242 unauthorized checks to herself amounting to at least $453,672.68.
Ms. Rouse allegedly hid her fraud by using the trucking company’s accounting software to change the entries in the software to reflect the unauthorized funds as business expenses and payments to companies the trucking company hired.
Disguising unauthorized checks as vendor payments allowed the scheme to succeed from January 2015 through August 2020. Ms. Rouse’s ability to create check payments for payroll and check payments for vendors created the perfect recipe for theft because of a lack in separation of duties. Ms. Rouse was sentenced to two years in federal prison on October 30, 2024.
Former bookkeeper sentenced to federal prison. (2024, November 1). https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndia/pr/former-bookkeeper-sentenced-federal-prison
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