Perpetrators and Pressure: Phil Ackers and Freddy Harris colluded to perform a billing scheme that resulted in TBB paying excessive fees for subpar maintenance work. Harris is the proprietor of Freddy’s Fix-it, a local maintenance company operated out of Harris’s personal residence. Ackers and Harris are related through marriage. Harris is the brother of Madelyn Harris Ackers, Phil Ackers’ wife. Prior to working for TBB, Ackers had financially supported Harris by helping him to purchase the residential property Harris owns and by writing him monthly checks of $1000 USD. After being hired by Franklin Kennedy to run TBB 10 years ago, these monthly checks of $1000 USD stopped. Evidence suggests that Phil Ackers decided to stop supporting Harris …show more content…
Harris was hired to perform real maintenance work, but did so with substandard material and performance. After the work was completed, Harris would submit invoices for the substandard work directly to Phil or Julie. Not only was the work performed substandard, Harris would invoice at prices higher than industry standard prices for the projects. The invoices would be approved by Phil and checks would be written to Harris. Documentation Path and Evidence: We began investigating the invoices to Freddy’s Fix-It because of the high dollar amount associated with some of the invoices. Further examination of the invoices revealed that Julie Roper of Phil Ackers were the individual noted as receiving the invoices (see below). This was unusual because during our initial observation of TBB’s operations Michelle Shelton was responsible for opening mail and receiving invoices related to purchase orders. Initially we suspected that the invoices may been submitted for work that was not actually performed, so we asked several employees if they recalled any significant maintenance work being performed. All of the employees we asked stated that yes maintenance work as described in the POs had