At the old city hall, mail was sorted in a glorified closet—not the sort of place you"d expect to be frequented by a high-ranking city official with multiple degrees. But the city of Wooten"s chief financial officer, Ed Peterman, had an unusual interest in the mail. He was often known to greet the postal carrier at the door to receive the day"s delivery, take it to the mail closet, then immediately remove selected envelopes and parcels and take them to the privacy of his own office. Other times, he would request hand delivery of incoming payments, circumventing the mail closet altogether.

These activities were part of an elaborate embezzlement scheme that resulted in the loss of millions of dollars for the city. Mr. Peterman was intercepting checks written to the city and endorsing them to his personal bank account.

The procedural manual for Wooten"s accounting department described mailroom policies, including the requirement for a clerk to log checks into a computer file and prepare a receipt. Another employee was responsible for preparing an independent verification of the amount of the receipts, and a third employee made the bank deposit. Despite these written guidelines, Mr. Peterman was often known to carry out some of these tasks himself, or to claim to be doing so.

In response to the news of this fraud, the CFO of a neighboring community commented that many cities are unable to achieve strong internal controls because of the limitations of small staff size and tight operating budgets. Rather, small cities often have no choice but to rely on the integrity of their employees.

Required:

1. Which internal control activity was violated in order for Mr. Peterman to perpetrate this fraud?
2. Do you consider this case to be an example of management fraud or employee fraud?
3. Was the city"s procedural manual adequate for prescribing internal controls to prevent this type of fraud? Why, or why not?
4. Why do you think no one reported the unusual mailroom practices of Mr. Peterman? To whom would such a violation be reported?
5. Do you think a business in Wooten could be guilty of customer fraud if it agreed to deliver its payments to Mr. Peterman personally rather than send them to the city"s mailing address?
6. The comments made by the neighbor CFO express which type of limitation of internal control systems discussed in this chapter?