Fraud of the Week

 

August 21, 2017

 

Agent Fraud—New York

Amount: $144,000

 

An analyst in New York was arrested for stealing almost $150,000 from his employer by writing out checks and depositing them into an account under his and his wife's names.

The fraud was discovered when an executive at the Woodbury insurance brokerage received a phone call from a fraud investigator at a bank regarding a check that was drawn on the insurance company's payable account for $3,925. The check was suspicious because the person the check was written out to, Janet B., was unknown to the insurance company. The suspicious check sparked an internal investigation that revealed a total of twenty-nine checks amounting to $144,245. The analyst that had misappropriated the checks had been working for the company as a senior analyst for almost four years. Although he had no authority to request the checks, the analyst would request checks of varying amounts, deposit the money into various bank accounts, later withdraw money from an ATM and use the money to pay off gambling debts, for retail shopping, and for a monthly gym membership. He was fired from his job six months before the investigation was launched. He will face criminal consequences.