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Emails should not be used to approve six figure cash transactions. An account reconciliation or approval of PTO? Sure. You can easily set up your online bank
by leftwich 11y ago
Emails should not be used to approve six figure cash transactions. An account reconciliation or approval of PTO? Sure.
You can easily set up your online banking to require one individual to intiate a wire transfer, and a separate individual to approve the transaction. This is a very basic financial control.
My guess is the companies falling victim to this don't have any formal controls in place.
- rwmurrayVT 11y agoIt all depends on the size of the company and the stupidity of the accounting/purchasing department. The article describes the fraud ranging from modest to sizable. It's not uncommon for many business to have 50k transactions every week. You don't want to go around getting approval for every transaction every day. It's not uncommon for many businesses to have 300k transactions every month. The business that lost 30m+ I don't understand... It must have been multiple wires over a period of time. They found some vulnerable accountant with the power and just milked them over time.
- leftwich 11y agoNot all transactions are created equal. Six figure cash disbursement transactions should require approval. And any company that has so many six figure cash disbursement transactions that approving them is an administrative burden is the type of company that most needs this kind of control in the first place.
- cm2187 11y agoI have seen emails regularly used to approve 9 and 10 figures transactions. But the approval always knew about the transaction, had talked about it with the relevant manager. And often would double check with the manager they trust that everything is in order.