Mary Jane betrays the boss and embezzles $400,000

Thanks to tuition paid by her employer, Mary Jane pursued an accounting degree and learned how to embezzle more than $400,000 in six years. The company discovered her fraud one year after she received her degree. Learn the basics of the investigation component of this fraud examination.

Mary Jane looked like many fraudsters: unremarkable. She was 40 years old; medium-length brown hair; short, unpolished nails; drab clothing. She was a faithful 16-year bookkeeper at ABC Manufacturing — a small, family-owned business. She and Tom, married since she was 19, had three children.

However, Mary Jane was anything but ordinary. Actually, she was extraordinary because the company discovered that in six years she had casually stolen more than $400,000 and had altered checks and credit card statements to conceal her embezzlement. Ironically, her employer unwittingly paid her to rob them blind — it reimbursed her tuition for her college education in accounting and even gave her paid time off to attend classes.

Her asset diversion fraud benefited from an overly complex accounting system, a lack of separation of duties and an inadequate management oversight — classic problems of a family company. Here’s the story of Mary Jane, our fraud examination and how a small business painfully learned anti-fraud principles after it trusted a “normal” employee.

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