How would you know that your bookkeeper is doing the right thing?
There’s a book-keeper in San Francisco that’s facing a life in prison for fraud, after he pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding investors in excess of $20million
The book keeper had been running a ponzi scheme – not quite the same scale as Madoff, but for longer.
Apparently the bookeeper had been promising clients that the money they invested with him would earn huge returns through a series of commercial loans. He’s been doing this for the last thirty years! To run a scheme like that you’d imagine he’d have to be pretty good at bookkeeping and keep all his bookwork upto date
Simply, he persuaded new investors to get on board, and used those funds to pay out existing investors, or for his own personal use
Next BAS due
1 response so far ↓
1 Paul Smalley // Nov 11, 2009 at 7:10 pm
An interesting article which should make people sit up and think!
However, when you engage a bookkeeper, wouldn’t you interview them? They do after all have access to very sensitive company information so you need to trust them!!
If someone is clever at fraud however, it can be concealed very well. But if you put in good reporting it should become evident what is happening pretty quickly and action taken – work with your accountant if that helps.
Thank fully the vast majority of people out there are trustworthy will work with you to succeed!