What company policies or procedures would you recommend to prevent each of the following activities?
a. A clerk at the Maple Ridge Company faxes a fictitious sales invoice to a company that purchases a large quantity of goods from it. The clerk plans to intercept that particular payment cheque and pocket the money.
b. The bookkeeper at a construction company has each of the three owners sign a pay cheque for her. Each cheque is drawn from a separate account of the company.
c. A clerk in the human relations department creates a fictitious employee in the personnel computer file. When this employee’s payroll cheque is received for distribution, the clerk takes and cashes it.
d. A clerk in the accounts receivable department steals $250 in cash from a customer payment and then prepares a computer credit memo that reduces the customer’s account balance by the same amount.
e. A purchasing agent prepares an invoice for goods received from a fictitious supplier. She sends a cheque for the goods to this supplier, in care of her mother’s post-office box.
f. A hacker manages to break into a company’s computer system by guessing the password of his friend—Champ, the name of the friend’s dog.
g. An accounts receivable clerk manages to embezzle more than $1 million from the company by diligently lapping the accounts every day for 3 consecutive years.
h. A computer virus on the company’s local area network is traced to an individual who accidentally introduced it when he loaded a computer game onto his microcomputer.
i. A clerk at a medical lab recognizes the name of an acquaintance as one of those whose lab tests are “positive” for an infectious disease. She mentions it to a mutual friend, and before long, the entire town knows about it.