Ethics Situation Dealing with Fraudulent Acts

Ethics Situation Dealing With Fraudulent Acts
Shawn Billger
ACC 375
Monday August 15, 2011
Juanita Davis

Ethics Situation Dealing With Fraudulent Acts
There are many ethical situations in the business world today and fraudulent acts are number one in the accounting business. To have an honest and trustworthy business you need to be able to detect, prevent, and protect your company from doing any type of fraudulent act. Fraud comes in a variety of forms including: fraudulent financial statements, financial fraud, accounting irregularities, environmental and health care violations, or asset misappropriation, just to name a few. Major fraud scandals and dramatic monetary losses resulting from the fraud have led legislators and enforcement agencies to change the federal and state regulatory environment.   The top three fraudulent acts in the business world today are skimming, cash larceny, and billing schemes.

Skimming is the theft of money before it has been recorded in the books of a business as being received. Skimming sales is the theft of money received from a sale of goods or services before it has been recorded. The two forms of skimming are sales skimming and receivables skimming. Skimming is an easy fraud to commit and may occur anywhere money is received by the business. Skimming money from sales is a common fraud done in the business world. Businesses without proper controls and those that are too reliant upon one or a few employees handling money and recording transactions provide an opportunity for this sales skimming. To prevent billing schemes you should compare levels of recorded sales and costs of sales against budgeted levels and look for unexplained entries in inventory and unexplained inventory shrinkage.

Larceny is a cash theft scheme perpetrated after the cash has been recorded in the company's books. Some examples of larceny and can be the stealing of cash from a cash register or the company's daily bank deposit, or the stealing of...