Misappropriation Through Currency Conversion

A national professional services firm identified suspicious wire transfers to a bank account that it did not recognize as an account of its vendors. Axium was retained to investigate the company’s concern that the funds were misappropriated. Axium analyzed the company’s financial records, including bank records and accounts payable records. Axium documented that the wire transfers made to the suspect account were recorded as part of payments of invoices from foreign vendors issued in a currency other than US dollars. We found that an accountant with the company intentionally inflated the amount due to the vendors when converting the foreign invoices to US dollars and, when making the payments to the vendors, she transferred the overage to the suspect account – which was identified as being affiliated with her. We also identified that the accountant falsified accounting records in an effort to conceal the fraud. Over four years, the employee misappropriated more than $1M from the company. Our findings were turned over to law enforcement.