5 ms·

This is actually kind of tricky to catch. You have to have authorization limits not just per transaction, but also total per period of time. Still, I admire th

This is actually kind of tricky to catch. You have to have authorization limits not just per transaction, but also total per period of time. Still, I admire this person's commitment to grift. Eight years she devoted to this fraudulent side hustle!

wmf 5y ago
Or audits.
CPLX 5y ago
Or, a budget.
icedchai 5y ago
You'd think someone higher up would've noticed an anomalous increase in total transactions. Maybe she was smart enough to ramp up over time. Maybe a few million a year is really just a drop in the bucket.
whoknew1122 5y ago
Common security practices would help. Stuff such as... 1.) Separation of duties. A single person shouldn't be ordering and paying for $40 million worth of equipment. And a person shouldn't be able to order $2.1 million worth of computers within two-and-a-half months without someone noticing. 2.) Trend analysis for invoices. If there are multiple $10k purchases within a short period of time, someone should start asking why purchases are broken up into separate chunks. This is regularly done within financial institutions, and there's probably a former banking compliance officer or two at Yale who can advise the institution on creating build this very obvious system. 3.) Mandatory vacations. It's much harder to perpetrate fraud when someone else does your job for a week or two each year. 4.) Asset inventories. How does millions of dollars of equipment go missing without anyone noticing? A red flag or two should also pop up when a school administrator starts driving multiple luxury cars to work.
- pxmpxm 5y ago
  Mandatory vacations especially, since most of these things are done by people in controller and similar corp finance rules. It's rather strange that an IT person could keep it going for so long - you'd think someone in the aforementioned roles would catch it way sooner?
- rdtwo 5y ago
  In the university system you don’t and can’t report fraud. I’ve heard of multiple stories of grad students getting retaliated against successfully for doing that.
  - whoknew1122 5y ago
    I honestly would say this varies between university system. In some places there is a definite push to silence whistleblowers. In the US, it's easier to get away with this if the institution is private. I went to a state school in the US. If there's fraud going on, it's a mismanagement of state funds. If I came across large-scale fraud, I wouldn't go through institutional channels. I'd go straight the state attorney general's office. That takes the investigation out of the hands of people who can directly punish you.
    - rdtwo 5y ago
      Even so the professor committing the fraud is likely the person in charge of your phd or masters thesis so if you burn them you will have to start over
- passivate 5y ago
  Your #3 point is great, I hadn't thought about it this way!
- secabeen 5y ago
  Yeah, I work in University IT, and everything we purchase goes through separation of duties. If I prepare an order, someone else has to do the order approval, and someone else has to mark the item received before it will be paid.
abeppu 5y ago
I don't know that she was especially committed to carrying it off well. She didn't file tax returns at all for 2017-2020, while working and presumably getting a W2? Isn't that just asking for someone to look at your situation?

wmf 5y ago

Or audits.

CPLX 5y ago

Or, a budget.

icedchai 5y ago

You'd think someone higher up would've noticed an anomalous increase in total transactions. Maybe she was smart enough to ramp up over time. Maybe a few million a year is really just a drop in the bucket.

whoknew1122 5y ago

Common security practices would help. Stuff such as... 1.) Separation of duties. A single person shouldn't be ordering and paying for $40 million worth of equipment. And a person shouldn't be able to order $2.1 million worth of computers within two-and-a-half months without someone noticing. 2.) Trend analysis for invoices. If there are multiple $10k purchases within a short period of time, someone should start asking why purchases are broken up into separate chunks. This is regularly done within financial institutions, and there's probably a former banking compliance officer or two at Yale who can advise the institution on creating build this very obvious system. 3.) Mandatory vacations. It's much harder to perpetrate fraud when someone else does your job for a week or two each year. 4.) Asset inventories. How does millions of dollars of equipment go missing without anyone noticing? A red flag or two should also pop up when a school administrator starts driving multiple luxury cars to work.

pxmpxm 5y ago
Mandatory vacations especially, since most of these things are done by people in controller and similar corp finance rules. It's rather strange that an IT person could keep it going for so long - you'd think someone in the aforementioned roles would catch it way sooner?
rdtwo 5y ago
In the university system you don’t and can’t report fraud. I’ve heard of multiple stories of grad students getting retaliated against successfully for doing that.
- whoknew1122 5y ago
  I honestly would say this varies between university system. In some places there is a definite push to silence whistleblowers. In the US, it's easier to get away with this if the institution is private. I went to a state school in the US. If there's fraud going on, it's a mismanagement of state funds. If I came across large-scale fraud, I wouldn't go through institutional channels. I'd go straight the state attorney general's office. That takes the investigation out of the hands of people who can directly punish you.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    Even so the professor committing the fraud is likely the person in charge of your phd or masters thesis so if you burn them you will have to start over
passivate 5y ago
Your #3 point is great, I hadn't thought about it this way!
secabeen 5y ago
Yeah, I work in University IT, and everything we purchase goes through separation of duties. If I prepare an order, someone else has to do the order approval, and someone else has to mark the item received before it will be paid.

abeppu 5y ago

I don't know that she was especially committed to carrying it off well. She didn't file tax returns at all for 2017-2020, while working and presumably getting a W2? Isn't that just asking for someone to look at your situation?