Accountant fleeced firm of millions, Khon Kaen police say

[webfact]

Accountant fleeced firm of millions, Khon Kaen police say
The Nation

BANGKOK: -- An employee at a Khon Kaen-based construction company allegedly forged some 1,000 cheques over the past four years to embezzle Bt640 million from her boss.

The boss, who found out in January when the bank informed him his firm's cheques had "bounced" due to lack of funds and customers asked for overdue payments, alerted police, acting provincial police region 4 chief Pol Lt-General Detnarong Suthichanbancha told a press conference yesterday.

A subsequent police inquiry led to the arrest of Supreecha Lekhawattana, 48, whose wife Punnada Palasak, 48, handled the company's financial affairs. She allegedly forged the cheques and wired money to several bank accounts run by Supreecha over four years.

Supreecha claims he is innocent. But it was reported that one such account received 24 cheques worth Bt10 million, police said. Police found that Punnada's brother also allegedly got money to fund his restaurant business, so they had arrest warrants issued for the three. However, only Supreecha has been captured so far, Detnarong added.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Accountant-fleeced-firm-of-millions-Khon-Kaen-poli-30244508.html


-- The Nation 2014-10-01

[Gsxrnz]

The company owner must be a really switched on character not to have noticed his bank account dwindle down to nothing over four years.

[halloween]

Wanted, dead or alive, independent auditors. Be warned, in Thailand they are likely to be found dead.

[ChrisY1]

4 years of fraud and Thb 640 mill. gone.........brilliant business management........

In fact so stupid, it makes me think we're not getting the whole story!

[Local Drunk]

The pronoun "she" in the article just about says it all.

[Commerce]

The pronoun "she" in the article just about says it all.

Ouch!

[clockman]

The enigma of Thailand, nothing is what it seems.!

[shirtless]

I thought businesses were audited every year, There is more to this maybe she is being used as a scapegoat .

[Chang_paarp]

Either a very good accountant or a very lax business owner (or both) to allow 1 cheque per working day over 4 years to slip through the net. One would think that the amount involved would have set some alarm bells ringing some time ago.

[NongKhaiKid]

What a lovely trusting, understanding husband.

His wife puts millions in accounts run by him so did he bother to ask any questions ?

If No - Hmm

If Yes - " My wife gave me an explanation, it seemed reasonable and i believe everything she says.

[moe666]

The usual nonsense post here, I think this is a scam used by dishonest accountants and book keepers the world over. I know it has happened in my home town more than a few times and if the person behind the fraud is reasonably smart they can scam for years

Edited October 1, 2014 by moe666

[Pib]

A really involved boss...a boss who apparently doesn't check the company's bank accounts too often. Well, he might check the accounts every 5 years...so if the bank hadn't notified him of the bouncing checks the boss would have caught the problem himself in another year. Yeap, a boss really involved with his company.

[lee b]

How on earth could the boss not have noticed anything for so long? I can understand a crook accountant continuing doing this when knowing she can get away with it, but still don't understand the boss??

[trainman34014]

I blame the boss completely for being an idiot of epic proportions. He lives and apparently runs a company in a land where you can't even trust Thai relatives with access to the dosh.

Says a lot for the tax authorities too not asking for audited books every year, perhaps they thought he was too high so or connected to dare ask.

[NeverSure]

It's not that simple. Usually the thief knows accounting and runs a double set of books. Unless there's a thorough audit, the boss only knows what he's shown.

I've mentioned before that in my first life I was a banker. For a couple of years I was an auditor. Even though each branch got audited every year, each year we'd catch one or two thieves who were stupid enough to think they'd thought up something new.

IMHO the only mistake the boss made, when dealing with that kind of money, was not having independent audits on a regular basis.

[jucel]

It's not that simple. Usually the thief knows accounting and runs a double set of books. Unless there's a thorough audit, the boss only knows what he's shown.

I've mentioned before that in my first life I was a banker. For a couple of years I was an auditor. Even though each branch got audited every year, each year we'd catch one or two thieves who were stupid enough to think they'd thought up something new.

IMHO the only mistake the boss made, when dealing with that kind of money, was not having independent audits on a regular basis.

That's a hell of a lot to miss! It would make a massive dent in the cash flow too.

Not sure where the cheques would be posted to, double entry b/k and all that!! Purchases, therefore the profit is understated? or some kind of loan account where it would be sitting in the balance sheet. Every debit has to have a credit!!

That's about 12 million quid. Must be a big company not to notice that sort of embezzlement!

[Commerce]

It's more than likely the boss was banging her one, and so trusted her implicitly .

As for any company not having an annual and fully independent audit of all stocks and values - in this case, tough poops to the boss.

Bet he's got a huge ISO 14001 flagged outside the buildings too, seeing as it was a construction company!

[Thai at Heart]

I would love to know which company this was. The boom in KKC for off plan construction has been nuts. One very notorious local family wanted to build a massive condo and shopping centre which miraculously stopped planning about 6 months ago.

At the time one friend said "don't touch it with a barge pole, why would anyone trust that family to build a property for u".

If its the same one, seems they magically lost 640 mn. Poooof. Gone. Can't imagine how an owner missed it.

[mike324]

highly unlikely 4 years and 640 million gone missing without anyone noticing. I have a feeling the numbers are reported wrong, 6 million is more likely. There are numerous times figures are reported wrong in newspapers when translated to English.

[Thai at Heart]

It's not that simple. Usually the thief knows accounting and runs a double set of books. Unless there's a thorough audit, the boss only knows what he's shown.

I've mentioned before that in my first life I was a banker. For a couple of years I was an auditor. Even though each branch got audited every year, each year we'd catch one or two thieves who were stupid enough to think they'd thought up something new.

IMHO the only mistake the boss made, when dealing with that kind of money, was not having independent audits on a regular basis.

That's a hell of a lot to miss! It would make a massive dent in the cash flow too.

Not sure where the cheques would be posted to, double entry b/k and all that!! Purchases, therefore the profit is understated? or some kind of loan account where it would be sitting in the balance sheet. Every debit has to have a credit!!

That's about 12 million quid. Must be a big company not to notice that sort of embezzlement!

Off plan deposits. Its a con. A massive con.

[NeverSure]

It's not that simple. Usually the thief knows accounting and runs a double set of books. Unless there's a thorough audit, the boss only knows what he's shown.

I've mentioned before that in my first life I was a banker. For a couple of years I was an auditor. Even though each branch got audited every year, each year we'd catch one or two thieves who were stupid enough to think they'd thought up something new.

IMHO the only mistake the boss made, when dealing with that kind of money, was not having independent audits on a regular basis.

That's a hell of a lot to miss! It would make a massive dent in the cash flow too.

Not sure where the cheques would be posted to, double entry b/k and all that!! Purchases, therefore the profit is understated? or some kind of loan account where it would be sitting in the balance sheet. Every debit has to have a credit!!

That's about 12 million quid. Must be a big company not to notice that sort of embezzlement!

The bookkeeper only has to keep a double set of bank account ledgers. Everything else will be correct and look rosy. Neither the boss nor auditors were there to look at debits and credits, many of which would have actually flowed to the bookkeeper. An auditor would have looked at actual bank statements and if suspicious, taken the owner to the bank itself for verification.

As a bookkeeper, all I have to do is make some of those credits be deposits to my own account. My debits and credits balance. Then I keep a ledger showing that they went into the boss's account. Everything balances until someone looks at the actual bank account.

[Thai at Heart]

Going to be an interesting meeting at the Thai Chinese chamber of business in Khon Kaen this week.

Note the statement "customers waiting for overdue payments". This is surely off plan money to be returned.

[stickyrice2000]

In the auditing process, the person who have access to the checks cannot do the bank reconciliation work. It seems like this woman has full control of the process. That's why she was able to forge the checks for over 4 years. Talk about bad business practice.

[jucel]

It's not that simple. Usually the thief knows accounting and runs a double set of books. Unless there's a thorough audit, the boss only knows what he's shown.

I've mentioned before that in my first life I was a banker. For a couple of years I was an auditor. Even though each branch got audited every year, each year we'd catch one or two thieves who were stupid enough to think they'd thought up something new.

IMHO the only mistake the boss made, when dealing with that kind of money, was not having independent audits on a regular basis.

That's a hell of a lot to miss! It would make a massive dent in the cash flow too.

Not sure where the cheques would be posted to, double entry b/k and all that!! Purchases, therefore the profit is understated? or some kind of loan account where it would be sitting in the balance sheet. Every debit has to have a credit!!

That's about 12 million quid. Must be a big company not to notice that sort of embezzlement!

The bookkeeper only has to keep a double set of bank account ledgers. Everything else will be correct and look rosy. Neither the boss nor auditors were there to look at debits and credits, many of which would have actually flowed to the bookkeeper. An auditor would have looked at actual bank statements and if suspicious, taken the owner to the bank itself for verification.

As a bookkeeper, all I have to do is make some of those credits be deposits to my own account. My debits and credits balance. Then I keep a ledger showing that they went into the boss's account. Everything balances until someone looks at the actual bank account.

I don't know how they do accounts over here. I dread to think!!

I can't believe there are no reconciliations done in what seems like a reasonable sized business!

[gomangosteen]

I don't know how they do accounts over here. I dread to think!!

I can't believe there are no reconciliations done in what seems like a reasonable sized business!

Hardly a Thai-only scenario

Last year a financial manager at Queensland Health, Australia, convicted of AUD$16 million fraud over a three year period.

I'd rate Queensland Health as at least a 'reasonable-sized business'; he was smart enough to fool the Auditor-General's office two years running

Colleagues raised the alarm a year ago, but an internal investigation could not substantiate their complaint.

The Auditor-General failed to detect the fraud - said by Bligh to be probably the biggest single embezzlement in the history of the public sector in Queensland - two years running.

Expect every country has it's share of crooked accountants and lawyers.

[slapout]

The reported construction business/company does not describe what and how this companies operates (government contracts, private sector, etc), bids, collection of monies owed, payment to employees, subcontranctors, expendable matherials consumed, etc.; Might be a lot more involved than an accountantant pulling 640 million out and completely depleating bank accounts of a viable business.

Does sound like she and the brother in law may have left the husband to take the blame for a small portion of what has disappeared. They may live freely and nicely on the proceeds if they planned properly