Between April 2016 and February 2017, Misty Corb Wood was accused of committing 29 counts of fraud including identity theft, public salary deduction fraud, identity theft, and public payroll fraud against her former employer. She worked at the Louisiana Supreme Court as a payroll supervisor from December 2015 until March 2017. During the alleged fraud scheme, Wood had deposited over $116,000 to bank accounts that she had controlled. Her fraud was later discovered during a routine audit of the Louisiana Supreme Court’s payroll records when the auditor was unable to find payroll records belonging to Judge Aaron F. McGee, III. He was questioned about his pay requests and responded that he had not completed any assignments during 2016. The auditors …show more content…
Payroll fraud occurs in a variety of different ways, which include ghost employees, paycheck diversion, unauthorized hours, buddy punching, pay rate alteration, and unpaid advances. The payroll fraud committed by Misty Corb Wood is best classified as unauthorized hours, which is one of the most commonly committed forms of payroll fraud. Unauthorized hours include the adding of hours to a timesheet in smaller increments to lessen the suspicion of supervisors. Wood’s knowledge of Louisiana Supreme Court’s accounting system and her position as the payroll supervisor enabled her to utilize her password and access to pay requests (the timesheets for ad hoc assignments) to commit and conceal her fraud. She would fill out a pay request that included hours that she made up for assignments supposedly completed and had the funds directly deposited to accounts she controlled (Former State Supreme Court payroll supervisor accused of $116,000 fraud scheme 2017) (Types of Payroll Fraud …show more content…
They first noticed inaccuracies when they were unable to find pay requests for one of the retired judges who Wood utilized to commit her fraud. Once the auditors realized that Judge McGee had not worked during 2016, the auditors were able to analyze the payroll register and its corresponding accounts for additional instances where fraud may have occurred. Since Wood had all of the deposits being directed to various banks and credit unions, the auditor could create a filter that only focused on employees who had payments deposited in the same bank accounts. In addition, the auditor could create a filter that only focused on employees who have funds being directly deposited in multiple bank accounts at once. Wood had bank accounts set up in various locations in Louisiana like New Orleans, Natchitoches, and Greenwood for example. If one of those locations popped up in the register, the auditors could follow up with the corresponding judge to find out if he or she worked the documented hours (Payroll Fraud Detection n.d.) (Former State Supreme Court payroll supervisor accused of $116,000 fraud scheme