The article below describes how two Chicago area school administrators took advantage of a new payroll system and initiated higher than normal paychecks for several employees that totaled $137,000 in return for kickbacks. Apparently the IT department had not turned on a control routine in the new software and the administrators knew it. It took SEVEN months before a school principal noticed excess hours on one inflated check and reported it to internal audit for investigation.
This breakdown in controls could have been prevented with simple control totals comparing authorized payroll totals to those on the checks, but apparently the staff didn't understand manual control processes that can be used as an alternative to computerized controls.
Remember, Lake County, FL's School District recently had a situation where "someone" bypassed internal procedures to allow overpayments to several staff who had been moved or demoted to lower paid positions, but the "unauthorized" revisions to payroll continued to pay the employees at the older, higher rate. I don't believe that situation has yet to be resolved in public.
vj
from THIS Chicago SunTimes source
3 charged in payroll scheme
CPS | 2 accused of creating $137,000 in phony checks
Two Chicago Public Schools payroll workers have been charged with theft for allegedly creating $137,000 worth of bogus paychecks for other CPS employees, school officials said Friday.
A third CPS employee also was charged with theft for allegedly accepting some of the phony checks.
At least seven Chicago Public Schools employees received paychecks for time they didn't work as part of a scheme allegedly spearheaded by two employees, Tremaine Edwards and Mark France, CPS Inspector General James Sullivan said. Edwards and France received kickbacks for making the fake checks, Sullivan said.
Both were charged this week with felony theft, according to the Cook County state's attorney's office.
Also charged with felony theft was Shandta Lambert, a clerk at Ross Elementary School who allegedly received more than $8,000 in the scheme, Sullivan said.
Sullivan said the phony checks were made around the time when CPS switched to a new computer program for its payroll system.
An auditing function that would have traced suspicious payroll entries to the employees who made them had not yet been activated.
Edwards and France "knew this, and they knew they could go in and make these entries without being traced," Sullivan said.
The scheme came to light after seven months when a principal noticed extra hours on an employee's paycheck and alerted the payroll department, which contacted the inspector general's office.
Of the seven known recipients of fake checks, three have been terminated and disciplinary action is pending against the rest, Sullivan said. More charges may also be filed.
