Cashing in on Falsified Copies of Official Receipt

A dishonest employee can always think of a two way to defraud his employer through falsification of documents.

Modus Operandi

A branch cashier of a multinational company was able to live beyond his means by underreporting his cash collections from certain customers. Since the manipulation revealed no visible alterations on the copies of the official receipts, the irregularity continued for sometime.

His company used carbonized official receipt in three copies: the original as customer's copy, duplicate as head office's copy while the triplicate remains in the booklet as the collectors copy. The original copy indicated the correct amount of cash received from the customer while the duplicate and the triplicate copies had lesser amounts. To do this feat, the cashier used cardboard underneath the original copy to prevent imprinting the correct amount on the other copies of the official receipts. After giving the original copy to the customer in the correct amount, the duplicate and triplicate copies were then prepared in carbon less the amount of cash misappropriated

Since there were no alternations on the carbon copies sent to the head office, the under receipting of cash collection was not noticed.

This method is commonly employed by dishonest collectors. For instance, there was case wherein 100 duplicate copies of the official found to have been falsified with reduced amounts appearing on them and the cash differences pocketed.

Detection and Prevention

The irregularity when the accounting of the company sent a periodic confirmation of accounts, requesting the customers to compare their copies of the documents against the statements prepared by the company. Fortunately, a certain customer complied with the request of the company. The customer was surprised to note that the amounts on several official receipts in his possession did not agree with those appearing on the statements. All the amounts were much lesser. Thereupon, the customer replied immediately to the confirmation letter of the accounting manager enclosing Xeroxed copies of his copies of the official receipts.

The cashier was dismissed after returning the amount of cash stolen from the company. To make alternation difficult, the official receipt form was reprinted in four copies. The triplicate copy was used as provisional receipt only for the customer. The head office cashier mailed to the customer the original copy upon receipt of he money from the collector. The duplicate remained as the accounting copy for records while the quadruplicate was retained by the collector as his copy. As an additional preventive measure, confirmation of accounts was made more frequently by the internal auditor, reminding the customers to compare their records with the statements furnished to them monthly by the company.