{"id":164,"date":"2011-07-26T01:22:23","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T01:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ua-cpas.com\/blog\/?p=164"},"modified":"2011-07-26T01:22:23","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T01:22:23","slug":"nj-fraud-case-embezzlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/2011\/07\/26\/nj-fraud-case-embezzlement\/","title":{"rendered":"NJ Fraud Case Highlights Importance of Internal Control"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday, July 12<sup>th<\/sup>, the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office announced that Kathleen Baker, a former office manager at Bathgate, Wegener &amp; Wolf (a real-estate partnership in Lakewood) has admitted to embezzling $1.14 million over six years. Prosecutors say that Baker created a fictitious company (also known as a \u201cstraw man\u201d company) called \u201cCorporate Solutions,\u201d and directed funds to a bank account under its name. The money was subsequently used to pay off her credit card bills and personal debts. Baker faces up to 20 years in prison.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Baker\u2019s embezzlement appears to be the result of either a lack of proper internal controls or the failure to enforce the controls in place. Her type of fraud was a classic \u201cFraud 101\u201d ploy. It was unsophisticated and can generally be prevented with proper segregation of employee duties and more owner involvement in the bill paying process. The controls, if absent, would not have been costly to implement\u2014a fraction of the roughly $190,000 taken each year.<\/p>\n<p>For more details about case see <a href=\"http:\/\/ua-cpas.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/Bathgate.pdf\">Embezzlement at Bathgate Law Firm <\/a><\/p>\n<p>At Urbach and Avraham CPAs, our audit team has been assisting our clients for over 20 years with internal control structuring, regardless of company size.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ex Office Manager of NJ Law Firm Guilty of Stealing $1.14 million. Lack of internal controls or failure to enforce the controls enabled office manager to embezzle over $1.0 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,13],"tags":[98,116],"class_list":{"0":"post-164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-small-business-forum","7":"category-fraud-small-business-forum","8":"category-litigation-support","9":"tag-fraud","10":"tag-internal-control","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}