Corporate Fraud and Embezzlement
Here’s another troubling case of corporate fraud and embezzlement where a bookkeeper at a company, a relatively small company, stole over a million dollars from their employer over the course of three or four years. There are a lot of takeaways from this, not only the fact that the person stole money and they could have been caught earlier, but what are the ripple effects of this? What effects does it have on the employees, other employees of that company, the vendors, the community? So $1.3 million is a lot of money.

Company Overview and Financial Impact
It happened from 2019 to 2023, so let’s call it four years. On average, that’s about $300,000 per year, let’s say $25,000 to $30,000 a month on average. And this was an electric company, Paul Patrick Electric. The fact that it’s named Paul Patrick means that it’s probably like a mom-and-pop type company, probably not a big corporate enterprise. A company like that may do four or five million a year in revenue. Companies of that size usually have about a 20% profit margin. So if you do, let’s say, $4 million a year and you have a profit margin of 20%, that means you have a million dollars a year in profit. If this person stole $300,000 a year, they stole 30% of that company’s profit.

Consequences for the Company
What does that mean for the company? It’s less money to hire new employees, less money to give raises to existing employees, less money to do marketing and advertising. This company may have been able to grow faster had they had that extra money. Think about it if you’re a company and you know a million dollars a year profit sounds like a lot of money, and it is, right? It’s not middle class; it’s upper middle class.

Business Opportunities Lost
If you had that extra $300,000 a year, what could you do with it? You could hire three $60,000 employees and only spend half of it. You could spend another maybe $60,000 or $70,000 on more marketing and advertising, and then maybe another $60,000 on new equipment, facilities, upgraded trucks, and still have $40,000 or $50,000 left over to put in the bank for cash. So that $300,000 represents a huge opportunity cost for that business and also the community.

Community Impact and Importance of Prevention
Companies like this typically donate to their local high school, their local sports teams; they sponsor things. Having that money disappear could have more of an invisible effect on the community. That’s why it’s important to catch these early. This was the company’s bookkeeper, who had access to the finances. Look, you need to have people accessing your finances if you’re a small company, but what you want to do is have that access be monitored.

Best Practices for Fraud Prevention
You want to have more than one person have access to finances so somebody else can see what’s happening. You want to make sure that bookkeepers take vacations. You want to make sure the mail goes to somebody other than who’s doing the books. A lot of simple best practices. We see these fraud cases all the time, and in almost every single case, there was something that could have been done to catch it earlier. I know hindsight’s 20/20, and I’m not saying you put the blame on the business, but I’m just trying to put a warning out there for companies to use best practices.

Fraud Triangle and Trust Issues
Even if you trust a person, understanding the fraud triangle means that sometimes people that you trust can still be in a position where they have to steal money. If you have other questions, you can contact the link below for more in-depth conversations with one of our investigators or information about investigative services.