Page 97 of Without Apology

Once again, I kept myself from looking at Simon, but I couldn’t help thinking about what Tom had just revealed. They were leaving on Wednesday for London—apparently, all of them, including Simon? The hurt sliced through me, but I simply had to shove those thoughts to the side.

Meanwhile, I had to ask the obvious question. “If these are employee compensation sheets, why would you think I could’ve been a suspect?” Payroll wasn’t even my domain; it was Jeff’s. Frankly speaking, I could think of much better ways to steal if I was so inclined. That was why I reviewed everything meticulously.

Lyle glanced at Simon, who gave him a nod. What the hell? They were exchanging silent signals as if we were in some interrogation room.

“Because you sign off on the spreadsheets,” Lyle explained, “and your team would’ve input the numbers into the financial system. The question is why would they have changed between the time you signed off on them and now.”

“There would be no changes once I sign off. I retain a copy of what I sign off on in a directory if we want to do a comparison.”

Simon and Lyle exchanged a glance.

“Can you show us?” Simon asked.

I was happy to do so, especially if it would shed light. Nothing I signed off on wasn’t filed somewhere electronically. I could say I did this in case of an audit, but it was more about covering my ass. This was appropriate, given the issue at hand. After I pulled up the spreadsheet with the last date in question, we compared it to the others.

“It matches what is in the system, but not what Jeff gave you. What I need is to go through the actual employee payroll register.”

Lyle nodded appreciatively. “That was going to be our next step this morning.”

“What doesn’t make sense is the cumulative amount remains the same despite the details no longer matching. Why would someone shift the numbers from one account to another unless—” A thought occurred to me. Something I’d learned in an article on fraud. It was the classic payroll embezzlement scheme.

“Unless what?” George asked.

“Unless we’re paying someone we shouldn’t be. It’s guaranteed such an unauthorized person wouldn’t be in the spreadsheet, but they would show up in the system. That’s why someone had to alter the numbers—to hide the difference. If they’d listed non-employees, then you’d have seen it when you did the audit. Luckily, I received access to the payroll system on Thursday.” Jeff had fought it, but since I was his new boss, he hadn’t had a choice.

I pulled up the last payroll cycle and sighed. We had over a thousand employees in the file.

“Sort by those who don’t have any deductions. Normal employees have 401K or medical, fictitious typically wouldn’t.” This came from Lyle, who appeared to be very adept at looking for fraud.

As soon as I sorted, it became obvious. Two employees stood out at the top.

Simon shook his head. “I show them as active in your HR system.”

I quickly pulled up my company email roster. “Yet they don’t have email, nor are they in the employee directory.”

“Who would have access to this?” George queried.

“Jeff, but he’d need some help from HR.” Like the girl he was sleeping with. “My guess is these two employees are recent new hires, showing up for the first time within the last few months.”

Looking at his computer, Simon nodded.

“Then I’d check with Courtney,” I suggested.

“Let’s call them both in,” George decided.

“If we did that on a Saturday, they’d be suspicious,” I pointed out. “Probably better to follow the money, check out the bank accounts and the cashing of the checks. Let me work with Lyle here to get him everything he needs from the system. Then we’ll document it all.”

Everyone seemed to be in agreement with this approach. I worked with Lyle over the next couple of hours to document all of the details, getting sicker to my stomach by the minute. Turned out over the last six months, two fictitious employees had been pulling a salary. Courtney had entered in their details and Jeff had processed their paychecks. It was the perfect fraud if anyone were comparing the HR system to payroll. But where it had fault was when Russ had originally requested a listing of all employee compensation. Jeff had provided the raw spreadsheet, the one I’d signed off on. Then when Lyle had gone back to ask, Jeff must’ve gotten nervous and deleted those two people from the spreadsheet. He’d spread out their payroll amounts to others so as not to change the total.

George hung around for a while, but when he realized we had everything we needed, he took off. Tom came back but remained quiet, merely spectating while Lyle and I went on a roll with all of the details. Finally, after giving them everything, I stood up. I was hungry and ready to get home. I avoided acknowledging Simon until he came to his feet and spoke.

“I’ll see you out.”

We walked in silence until we were in the elevator.

“Thank you for coming in today.”

I couldn’t contain my sarcasm or temper. “Yes, well, thankfully George thought I could be helpful rather than a suspect for theft.”

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