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I remember a similar case when a Lithuanian dude sent a barrage of fake invoices (for purported hardware purchases) to Google and Facebook. He made off with $12

I remember a similar case when a Lithuanian dude sent a barrage of fake invoices (for purported hardware purchases) to Google and Facebook. He made off with $123 million before he got caught [1]. A Yale University employee also stole $40 million by ordering computers for supposed research and reselling them through a third party [2]. An Amazon manager similarly stole $10 million with fake invoices [3]. It seems this kind of fraud is inevitable once an organization scales beyond a certain level. Harvard 1-https://www.zdnet.com/article/lithuanian-man-pleads-guilty-to-scamming-google-and-facebook-out-of-123-million/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/lithuanian-man-pleads-guilty-t... 2 - https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089525660/a-former-yale-employee-admits-she-stole-40-million-in-electronics-from-the-unive https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089525660/a-former-yale-empl... 3 - https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/07/06/amazon_manager_fraud/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/07/06/amazon_manager_fr...

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
I'm wondering how anyone at an ivy IT dept, even the central IT shop, gets $40M of budget for a single project and with little oversight.* That's a whole lot of budget. In other news, I saw ~$120M of Stanford's money frittered away based on sloppy program/project management and lack of oversight (not through malice). The real question is: Is there any material organizational difference when money is wasted through deceit or through incompetency? The optics of the former are worse because a villain to the story got ahead improperly. * I did work at an ivy IT department where my boss had roughly $2M/y budget without supervision. $40M without internal controls, approvals, or auditing seems bonkers reckless.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  Story said the fraud was committed over ten years, so you could imagine a more reasonable $4MM/year. Although, usually these schemes get caught because the perpetrator starts small and keeps amping up the score. Below highlight said that individual purchases were kept below some of the reporting requirements. She would break up the fraudulent purchases into orders that were below $10,000 each so that she wouldn't need to get additional approval from school officials.
  - hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
    Bloody hell. Still, that's a lot to miss. The accounting department and internal audit controls absolutely failed. They should also have external auditors audit through transactions every couple of years to flag unusual activity for expanded auditing. Furthermore, it seems like if banks can do reasonable fraud detection then accounting software should include an ability to detect patterns of suspicious transactions for additional scrutiny. The accounting department and her supervisor also share culpability.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

I'm wondering how anyone at an ivy IT dept, even the central IT shop, gets $40M of budget for a single project and with little oversight.* That's a whole lot of budget. In other news, I saw ~$120M of Stanford's money frittered away based on sloppy program/project management and lack of oversight (not through malice). The real question is: Is there any material organizational difference when money is wasted through deceit or through incompetency? The optics of the former are worse because a villain to the story got ahead improperly. * I did work at an ivy IT department where my boss had roughly $2M/y budget without supervision. $40M without internal controls, approvals, or auditing seems bonkers reckless.

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
Story said the fraud was committed over ten years, so you could imagine a more reasonable $4MM/year. Although, usually these schemes get caught because the perpetrator starts small and keeps amping up the score. Below highlight said that individual purchases were kept below some of the reporting requirements. She would break up the fraudulent purchases into orders that were below $10,000 each so that she wouldn't need to get additional approval from school officials.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
  Bloody hell. Still, that's a lot to miss. The accounting department and internal audit controls absolutely failed. They should also have external auditors audit through transactions every couple of years to flag unusual activity for expanded auditing. Furthermore, it seems like if banks can do reasonable fraud detection then accounting software should include an ability to detect patterns of suspicious transactions for additional scrutiny. The accounting department and her supervisor also share culpability.
deleted 2y ago
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