How to Cook the Books

Our title today may be slightly misleading. We're writing this blog due to one woman's comment that all the directors of a crooked charity are responsible for theft of donated funds. Are they?

They certainly are if they know what's going on, but what if they don't? Yes, a person sitting behind a counter eight or nine hours a day with very few customers has plenty of time to cook the books...to create false expense receipts in order to embezzle.

What else could they do? With that much time, it would be quite easy to create a totally false set of books. That would mean one set with the real income/outgo and one with totally fictitious numbers. The fraudulent set of records would then be taken to the quarterly board meetings. 

We've been told that a certain suspect charity uses a paper ticket book for many of its transactions. What could be easier to falsify each night at home? Simply take the store's book with its original receipts and copy each one using different pricing. Voila! You have embezzlement!

No, don't blame directors who were cajoled into helping a worthy cause. Blame the person who created the scam and pockets the money! 

*****

A word to the wise: Never let the person who writes the checks balance the checkbook. We once mentioned that to an employee of an entity at which we volunteered. "But," the person said, "Agneathetta Crookshank does it all. She's totally honest." "Yes," we replied, "but what if someone stole a blank check from Ms. Crookshank, forged her name, and she didn't notice it?" Our friend's reply? "I'd like to see the person who would dare steal anything from Agneathetta Crookshank." 

Ah, so there is value in being an old biddy...