Ex-HP top aide in the clink for racking up $1m on company credit cards A former HP employee was sentenced on Monday to 21 months in prison, after having charged unauthorized personal expenses to her company credit cards to the tune of nearly $1m. According to a statement by the US Attorney's Office, Holli Dawn Coulman, 45, joined HP in 2000 and spent 12 years at the company. During the last four …
If you read the article, it's obvious and explained. Most admin assistants have that kind of "power" for lack of a better word. They managed the bosses email, phone calls, meetings.. everything. If they work at it, they can manipulate the whole company. There's an old saying about secretaries being the ones the run the company (yeah.. that long ago when "secretary" was allowed). Some can cover up a bad boss and make him and the company look good or destroy them. They can also pretty much embezzle as much they like. At some point, though, they will get caught. Many times it's after they quit or retire when a new person takes over and starts asking questions....
@Mark 85 wrote:
If you read the article, it's obvious and explained. Most admin assistants have that kind of "power" for lack of a better word. They managed the bosses email, phone calls, meetings.. everything. If they work at it, they can manipulate the whole company....
True. The way I see them get caught is when some bigwig with a black-belt in office politics at or above the same level as the admin's boss either tries to get something done or asks for some bit of information and the admin blocks them with some stupid reason. The blackbelt bigwig quickly smells bullshit and demands answers. That's when everything comes out into the open and the admin finally gets caught. Believe me, I've seen it happen.
That is possible in _EVERY_ USA company I know.
The admin assistant expenses are approved by her boss who happens to be the VP/Director/etc she is an admin for. At the same time she has delegated authority to read his email and approve any expense in their name. So if she wants to clock an arbitrary amount of money on their credit card
The solution is trivial - the admins to report to an uber-admin (usually the CEO admin) which does their performance, expenses, etc. This used to be the standard setup in Europe once upon a time. However, I am yet to see a USA company to do that. It is also going the way of the dinosaurs in Europe as well.
There is always at least one exception :
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2229767/Former-dinner-lady-Margaret-Bailey-stole-90-000-primary-school-fund-global-property-empire-homes-US-Bulgaria.html
Although i note the US woman got away lightly in comparison. 21 months for a $m against 30 months for our UK's c£100,000.
What is staggering in both cases is how it went unnoticed for so long.
Ask "general secretary" Josef Stalin on how he got to be big cheese in Moscow. When you control the communications around you, you can control lots of things.
Maybe she was hoping to be a higher up after her boss quit or some such.
Re-paying at $3000/month (if that is actually done) may be in fact a cheap loan. The couple of years in the slammer is just the cost of doing business.
A rather high cost, I think, because with that mark in her CV she's not going to get work anywhere near something with responsibility again. In fact, with all the background checking going on in recruitment in the US, I wouldn't be surprised if even McDonalds wouldn't want her.
And she won't be allowed to set up her own business either.
So she's now practically retired, and still has a million to pay back. Not exactly a good loan.
Many years ago when I got my first corporate AMEX, I remember the FAQ - #1 Q:"What is the spending limit on my Corporate AMEX?" A:"There is no spending limit on my corporate AMEX"
Considering I earned about 25K at the time, I never tried to find out if I could have driven off in a Ferrari.
When I arranged a company credit card the bank's guidance was to set the limit at 1.5 times the persons monthly salary, unless it was used for something specific (e.g. a card for purchasing equipment without setting up trade accounts, etc) or their job had the expectation of unusually high expenses from frequent travel/hotels/etc.
I had one of those in the 80s & 90s when I was with a (now defunct) Merchant Bank. When the tube strike was on I used it for taxis, a chartered plane and hotel rooms for our team of 9 people in Amsterdam for weeks, and nobody even raised an eyebrow.
Before you ask, we were all based in Cardiff but working in London Mon-Fri.
It also came in handy when lunching with the currency traders (also now mostly defunct).
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