The most important factor in preventing cash larceny from the deposit is:

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Deposits in Transit

A final concealment strategy with stolen deposits is to carry the missing money as deposits

in transit. In Case 1716, an employee was responsible for receiving collections, issuing

receipts, posting transactions, reconciling accounts, and making deposits. Such a lack of

separation of duties leaves a company extremely vulnerable to fraud. This employee took

over $20,000 in collections from her employer over a five-month period. To hide her theft,

the perpetrator carried the missing money as deposits in transit, meaning that the missing

money would appear on the next month’s bank statement. Of course, it never did. The

balance was carried for several months as “d.i.t.” until an auditor recognized the

discrepancy and put a halt to the fraud.

Preventing and Detecting Cash Larceny from the Deposit

The most important factor in preventing cash larceny from the deposit is separating duties.

Calculating daily receipts, preparing the deposit, delivering the deposit to the bank, and

verifying the receipted deposit slip are duties that should be performed independently of

one another. So long as this separation is maintained, shortages in the deposit should be

quickly detected.

All incoming revenues should be delivered to a centralized department where an itemized

deposit slip is prepared, listing each individual check or money order along with currency

receipts. Itemizing the deposit slip is a key antifraud control. It enables the organization to

track specific payments to the deposit and may help detect larceny as well as lapping

schemes and other forms of receivables skimming. It is very important that the person who

prepares the deposit slip be separated from the duty of receiving and logging incoming

payments so that he can act as an independent check on these functions. Before it is sent to

the bank, the deposit slip should be matched to the remittance list to ensure that all

payments are accounted for.

Typically, the cashier will deliver the deposit to the bank, while a cash-receipts clerk posts

the total amount of receipts in the cash receipts journal. In some cases, the cashier does the

posting, while a separate individual delivers the deposit. In either case, the duties of posting

cash receipts and delivering the deposit should be separated. If a single person performs

both functions, that individual can falsify the deposit slip or cash receipts postings to

conceal larceny from the deposit.

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Once the deposit has been totaled and matched to the remittance list, it should be secured

and taken immediately to the bank, along with two copies of the deposit slip (one of which

will be retained by the bank). A third copy of the deposit slip should be retained by the

organization. When the deposit is made, one copy of the deposit slip is stamped

(authenticated) by the bank as received. The bank then delivers this copy back to the

depositing organization.

The authenticated deposit slip should be compared with the organization’s copy of the

deposit slip, the remittance list, and the general ledger posting of the day’s receipts. If all

four totals match, this verifies that the deposit was properly made. It is critical that someone

other than the person who prepared the deposit reconcile the authenticated deposit slip. If

the cashier, for example, is allowed to prepare and reconcile the deposit, the control

function designed to prevent cash larceny at this stage is effectively destroyed. The cashier

could falsify the deposit slip or force totals to conceal larceny. If fraud is suspected, verify

each deposit prior to dispatch without the suspect’s knowledge; then call the bank to verify

that the entire deposit was made.

In order to further safeguard against larceny, two copies of the bank statement should be

delivered to different persons in the organization. Each person should verify deposits on the

bank statement to postings in the general ledger and to receipted deposit slips. If deposits in

transit show up on a bank reconciliation, they should clear within

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two days of the date of reconciliation. Any instance in which a deposit in transit exceeds the

two-day clear should be investigated.

To prevent deposit lapping, organizations can require that deposits be made in a night drop

at the bank and verify each deposit at the beginning of the next day’s business.

The following case study has been selected as an example of how an employee stole cash

from his company’s bank deposits. Bill Gurado, a branch manager for a consumer-loan

finance company, took his branch’s deposits to the bank himself, where he placed the

money into his own account rather than his employer’s. CFE Harry Smith audited Gurado’s

branch to determine the scope of his scheme. This case provides an excellent example of

how an employee’s perception of his company’s controls can be valuable in preventing and

detecting fraud.

CASE STUDY: THE OL’ FAKE SURPRISE AUDIT GETS ’EM EVERY TIME

Some people would say that auditors have no sense of humor—that they are a straight-

laced, straight-faced bunch. Bill Gurado knows better.

Gurado worked as a branch manager for Newfund, a consumer-loan finance company in

New Orleans. He was the highly respected leader of the company’s oldest, largest, and most

successful branch. With such a high profile, Gurado commanded a lot of respect. Other

managers wanted to be like him. Employees respected him. Everyone in the company

considered him a good guy.

For reasons not entirely clear, Gurado began stealing from the company. He did not take a

lot of money. His scheme was less than brilliant. And because he did not appreciate an

auditor’s sense of humor, his fraud was brought to light just weeks after it began.

Newfund employed good controls, both from an accounting as well as a management

standpoint. One control on which Barry Ecker, the company’s internal auditor, relied was

the surprise audit. He normally sprang surprise audits at least once, and sometimes twice, a

year on each of Newfund’s thirty branches. Due to the size of Gurado’s branch, Ecker could

not perform a surprise audit by himself. He would have to coordinate with the external

audit staff. During these surprise audits, Ecker came in and took control from the start. He

was extremely thorough. Harry J. Smith, one of the external auditors whose team would

accompany him, describes Ecker as “your typical old-time sleuth-type auditor. A little bitty,

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short, pudgy guy who got a lot of psychic pleasure out of scaring the hell out of branch

people. He’d come in and he’d be quiet and very secure about his papers and his area. He’d

stare people down. He’d stare at ledger cards looking for irregularities. He’d just make

people quake.” Adds Smith, “He was really fun to watch. When he was in his character, he

was one for the books.” Having been through several surprise audits, Gurado knew the

extent of Ecker’s investigating. He probably had that in the back of his mind when he ran

into Ecker at a store by chance over the weekend.

They had a brief conversation, and as might be expected from someone like Ecker, who

enjoyed putting a little fear into people, he mentioned he was about to launch a surprise

audit at Gurado’s branch. “Well, I’ll see you Monday,” he said without cracking a smile.

“Harry and I are going to pull an audit on your branch on Monday morning.” Of course, he

had no plans to audit the branch any time in the near future. As they parted, Gurado said,

“Great. See you then.” But Gurado was not looking forward to seeing Ecker at all. He knew

that Ecker, with all his searching and checking, would find some irregularities. He would

piece together Gurado’s fraud without much trouble at all. It would not take much effort to

learn that Gurado had diverted company money into his own bank account.

Newfund’s clientele was such that it received a lot of cash. For about a week Gurado took

the daily deposits to the bank himself and deposited the money in his personal account. He

made certain all the daily reports were sent to headquarters as usual—except, of course,

the receipted bank deposit slips. It was only a few thousand dollars. But he had not yet had

a chance to replace any of the money (if he had ever intended to), and he would not have

time to cover his tracks before the “surprise” audit.

“He was absolutely convinced that had we audited his branch, we would find it,” says

Smith. “And we probably would have. Barry Ecker did an old-style audit where you go in

and seal the file cabinets and take immediate control of the cash drawers and the ledger

tubs. It’s a complete instantaneous control and tie-out. I’m pretty sure we’d have found it. I

know the branch manager was convinced his boat was sunk.”

Gurado did some deep soul-searching that weekend. On Sunday night, he called on the

president of the company, a man with a reputation of being a hard-driving, authoritarian

individual. “I know it was a giant step for the branch

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manager to call him up that night,” Smith says. At the president’s house that Sunday

evening, Gurado came clean. “I know the auditors are coming tomorrow morning,” he said.

Then he confessed to taking money from the company. He was immediately fired.

On Monday morning, Ecker called Smith at the accounting firm. He told Smith what had

transpired, and then said, “Look, we gotta go audit the branch.” Smith and Ecker pulled out

all the stops to get an audit team over to the branch to make sure there was nothing else

going on.

They found exactly what Gurado had reported and nothing else. Looking back on this case,

Smith feels certain the fraud would have been detected even without the misunderstood

joke. Newfund practiced a control procedure that probably would have turned up the

missing money within fifteen days. Because of that fact, he surmises that Gurado might

have been covering some kind of short-term debt with the intent of repaying it.

Since Gurado returned the funds immediately and because he had confessed, the company

did not pursue any criminal or civil action against him, feeling it a better course of action to

keep the matter out of the public eye.

Word did travel quickly around the company, however—upper management made sure of

that. The fact that this esteemed branch manager tripped himself up and immediately got

caught went a long way toward reinforcing the importance of following proper procedures.

“People commonly measure auditing’s benefit by the substance of its findings and

recommendations,” Smith says. “Auditing’s role in preventing abuse is hard to observe and

measure and is often unappreciated. But this case clearly shows that the specter of having

an audit certainly affects peoples’ behavior.”

Several names and details have been changed to preserve anonymity.

PROACTIVE COMPUTER AUDIT TESTS FOR DETECTING CASH LARCENY

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Title Category Description Data file(s)

Summarize by employee the difference between the cash receipt report and the sales register system.

All Focus should be given to employees with high-dollar differences, especially when manifested as high occurrence of small-dollar differences.

• Sales system register

• Cash receipts register

Summarize by employee by day the difference between the cash receipt report and the sales register system.

All Focus should be given to employees with high-dollar differences, especially high occurrences of small-dollar differences.

• Sales system register

• Cash receipts register

Summarize by location discounts, returns, cash receipt adjustments, accounts receivable write-offs, and voids charged.

All Locations with high adjustments may signal actions to hide cash larceny schemes.

• Sales system register

• Invoice sales register

• Cash receipts register

Summarize by employee discounts, returns, cash receipt adjustments, accounts receivable write-offs, and voids charged.

All Employees with high adjustments may signal actions to hide cash larceny schemes.

• Sales system register

• Invoice sales register

• Cash receipts register

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Title Category Description Data file(s)

List top 100 employees by dollar size (one for discounts, one for refunds, one for cash receipt adjustments, one for accounts receivable write-offs, and one for sale voids).

All Employees with high adjustments may signal actions to hide cash larceny schemes.

• Sales system register

• Invoice sales register

• Cash receipts register

List top 100 employees who have been on any top-100 list for three months (whether for discounts, for refunds, for cash receipt adjustments, for accounts receivable write-offs, or for sale voids).

All Employees with high adjustments may signal actions to hide cash larceny schemes.

• Sales system register

• Invoice sales register

• Cash receipts register

List top 10 locations that have been on a top-10 list for three months (whether for discounts, for refunds, for cash receipt adjustments, for accounts receivable write-offs, or for sale voids).

All Locations with high adjustments may signal actions to hide cash larceny schemes.

• Sales system register

• Invoice sales register

• Cash receipts register

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Title Category Description Data file(s)

Compute standard deviation for each employee for the last three months and list those employees that provided three times the standard deviation in the current month (separately for discounts, for refunds, for cash receipt adjustments, for accounts receivable write-offs, and for sale voids).

All Employees with high adjustments may signal actions to hide cash larceny schemes.

• Sales system register

• Invoice sales register

• Cash receipts register

Compare adjustments to inventory to the void/refund transactions summarized by employee.

All First, a summary of adjustments by inventory item number and employee is completed, which is then compared to credit adjustments (to inappropriately decrease inventory that was supposedly returned) by inventory number.

• Sales system register

• Inventory detail register

Review unique journal entries in cash accounts.

All All journal entries in cash accounts, especially those that appear to be unique adjustments, should be reviewed as concealment actions to a cash larceny scheme.

• General ledger detail

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Title Category Description Data file(s)

Summarize user access for the sales, accounts receivable, cash receipt, and general ledger systems for segregation of duties reviews.

All User access to systems may identify segregation of duties issues. For example, if an employee can make changes to the accounts receivable system and then post other concealment entries in the general ledger, such nonsegregation of duties would allow an employee to hide his actions. User access should be reviewed from the perspective of adjustments within the application and adjustments to the data itself.

• System user access logs or System user access master file

Summarize user access for the sales, accounts receivable, cash receipt, and general ledger systems in nonbusiness hours.

All Concealment adjustments often are made in nonbusiness hours. User access should be reviewed from the perspective of adjustments within the application and adjustments to the data itself.

• System user access logs

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SUMMARY

Cash larceny is the intentional taking away of an employer’s cash, currency, or checks,

without the consent, and against the will, of the employer. Cash larceny schemes differ from

skimming in that they are on-book frauds; they involve the theft of money that has been

recorded in the employer’s books, whereas skimming involves the theft of unrecorded cash.

Because cash larceny schemes target recorded cash, these frauds leave a victim

organization’s books out of balance; cash on hand is reduced by the theft even as recorded

cash remains constant. Cash larceny frauds are sometimes discovered as a result of this

imbalance, but the perpetrator of a cash larceny scheme will often take steps to conceal the

imbalance on the organization’s books.

Most cash larceny schemes take place at the point of sale. Several methods can be used to

conceal this type of fraud, most of them fairly uncomplicated. The perpetrator might steal

from a cash register other than the one he is logged onto in order to keep from being a

suspect. Another common scheme involves the repeated theft of very small amounts in

hopes that the shortages will be disregarded by the organization. Reversing transactions

such as fraudulent refunds can be processed to account for the missing funds. Cash counts

or sales records may be altered to produce a false balance, or records may be destroyed

altogether to prevent others from reconciling cash on hand to recorded sales. When

employees steal receivables, as opposed to incoming sales, these thefts are typically

concealed by force balancing, processing fraudulent discounts or other reversing entries, or

destroying records of the transaction in question.

Cash larceny schemes also frequently target the victim organization’s bank deposits. The

perpetrator steals currency or checks after the deposit has been prepared but before it has

been taken to the bank. These schemes frequently succeed when one person is in charge of

calculating daily receipts, preparing the deposit, delivering the deposit to the bank, and

verifying the receipted deposit slip. This breakdown in controls allows the perpetrator to

steal cash without anyone detecting the resulting imbalances in the company’s accounting

records. In some cases, the perpetrator will lap daily receipts or list missing deposits as

“deposits in transit” to further conceal the crime.

ESSENTIAL TERMS

Cash larceny

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3-1

3-2

3-3

3-4

3-5

3-6

The theft of an organization’s cash after it has been recorded in the accounting system.

Cash receipts schemes

Frauds that target incoming sales or receivables. Typically, the perpetrators in these

schemes physically abscond with the victim organization’s cash instead of relying on phony

documents to justify the disbursement of the funds. Cash receipts frauds generally fall into

two categories: skimming and cash larceny.

Deposit lapping

A method of concealing deposit theft that occurs when an employee steals part or all of the

deposit from one day and then replaces it with receipts from subsequent days.

Fraudulent disbursements

Schemes in which an employee illegally or improperly causes the distribution of funds in a

way that appears to be legitimate. Funds can be obtained by forging checks, submission of

false invoices, or falsifying time records.

Reversing transactions

A method used to conceal cash larceny. The perpetrator processes false transactions to void

a sale or refund cash, which cause sales records to reconcile to the amount of cash on hand

after the theft.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

(Learning objective 3-1) What is cash larceny?

(Learning objective 3-2) How do cash larceny schemes differ from fraudulent

disbursements?

(Learning objective 3-3) What is the difference between cash larceny and skimming?

(Learning objective 3-4) Where do cash larceny schemes rank among cash

misappropriations in terms of frequency? In terms of median loss?

(Learning objective 3-5) What are the main weaknesses in an internal control system

that permit fraudsters the opportunity to commit cash larceny schemes?

(Learning objective 3-6) What are the five methods discussed in this chapter that are

used to conceal cash larceny that occurs at the point of sale? Explain how each works.

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3-8

3-9

3-10

3-1

3-2

3-3

3-4

3-5

3-6

3-7

3-8

3-9

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(Learning objective 3-8) How do employees commit cash larceny of incoming

receivables? How are the schemes concealed?

(Learning objective 3-8) What is force balancing, and how is it used to conceal cash

larceny?

(Learning objective 3-9) How do fraudsters commit cash larceny from the bank deposit?

(Learning objectives 3-5, 3-7, and 3-10) What are some basic internal control procedures

to deter and detect cash larceny schemes?

DISCUSSION ISSUES

(Learning objectives 3-1, 3-6, 3-8, and 3-9) Briefly describe some common types of cash

larceny schemes.

(Learning objective 3-3) Why is it generally more difficult to detect skimming than cash

larceny?

(Learning objectives 3-2 and 3-3) In the case study of bank teller Laura Grove, what type

of fraud did she commit?

(Learning objective 3-5) What are the internal control weaknesses that failed to deter

and detect the fraud in Laura Grove’s case?

(Learning objectives 3-6 and 3-7) Other than falsifying a company’s records of cash

receipts, how might an employee conceal larceny from a cash register?

(Learning objectives 3-10 and 3-11) What steps might an organization take to protect

outgoing bank deposits from cash larceny schemes?

(Learning objective 3-8) How is the larceny of receivables often detected?

(Learning objective 3-11) In the case study “The Ol’ Fake Surprise Audit Gets ’Em Every

Time,” how did New-fund’s accounting and management controls contribute to the

detection of Gurado’s fraud scheme? How did the resulting actions of management help

to deter future frauds?

(Learning objective 3-11) Among the proactive audit techniques suggested in this

chapter are (1) a summary, by employee, of the difference between cash receipt reports

and the sales register system and (2) a summary, by employee, of discounts, returns,

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cash receipt adjustments, accounts receivable write-offs, and voids processed. Why

would these two tests be effective in detecting cash larceny?

ENDNOTES

1. Lanza, pp. 38–40.