In hindsight, it seems obvious: Femy’s pilfering of BFL Corp. should have never been
allowed to start, much less last as long as it did.
Femy played a lead role in transitioning his old employer onto a new enterprise resource
planning (ERP) system. A mistake by his new employer created an opportunity for Femy
to steal company funds.
As a part of the changeover team, Femy became an expert on all aspects of the ERP
system including financial reporting, journal entries, and, most importantly, checks and
wire payment processing. He was also, by mistake, along with a co-worker, given the
authority to approve checks up to N5, 000,000.
The accounting department consisted of a controller, assistant controller, accounting
manager (Femy), and three people under him. Of the three of them, it was only him who
could request checks. Together with a co-worker, he could also approve checks. In their
small accounting department, they knew each other’s system passwords and could often
log on as someone else to get the job done. One morning, while sitting at his desk, he
realized that he could log in as someone else, request a check, and then log in as himself
and approve his own request.
In June 2010, his wife was pregnant and his annual N800, 000 salary was just not getting
all of his bills and loans paid. He thought that if he just paid off his debts, then they could
do quite well with his income matching their living expenses.
He registered a business “BFL Business Consulting” , got a BVN and opened a bank
account at a major bank. He chose MeetingPoint Bank because the company did a lot of
business with another company that had MeetingPoint as its bankers . On a Thursday
afternoon, right before he left for the day, he logged on as a subordinate and requested
a check made out for N20, 000. He then logged on as himself and approved it. He picked
up the check on Friday and deposited it in MeetingPoint bank account on Friday
afternoon. For every credit (to the bank) there has to be a debit, and his debits needed to
be hidden somewhere. Payments were usually for insurance claims, commission
expenses, various refunds, or an administrative expense. He hid all the debits in ledger
accounts that had a lot of reconciliation activity, making sure that his debit helped the
account reconcile to zero.
Using this method, He stole about N500, 000 in 2010, N750, 000 in 2011, N1.2 million in
2012, N1.5 million in 2013 and N3 million in 2014 before he was apprehended during a
Fraud Audit by GFF.
Include Background Checks in your hiring procedures and avoid hiring the likes of Femy.
Do Vendor Background Check/Fraud Audits and avoid losing funds to fake companies
like BFL Business Consulting.
Contact GF Forensics today
www.globalfraudforensics.com “Fraud Robs Our Jobs”
Send an email to : [email protected] +2348098027322
https://globalfraudforensics.com/ https://globalfraudforensics.com/fraudxpose/