Case Study: All-American Girl

Katie Jordan was a college graduate and seemed to be a very trust worthy person. She started working for Aramis Properties when she finished college. This was her first job so she was very excited. Katie was happy and eager about the opportunity that she was given and wanted to do a good job so that she could move up within the company. Katie was hired as an onsite property manager. Her duties were to show apartments to prospective tenants, collect rent, and supervise a maintenance crew. Katie was responsible for running the day to day operations of the complex. She reported to a man named Gil Fleming. Mr. Fleming really liked Katie because of her enthusiasm and she was very good at her job. No one had any complaints about Katie, and when the company acquired another apartment complex, they asked Katie to run it. The new job would be away from any of the company offices. She would have very little supervision. Mr. Fleming trusted that she would do a great job. He was unable to travel to Houston often so, that let Katie unsupervised. Katie had a fiancé that was injured in a motor cross accident and left him without income. He also did not have any health insurance to pay the medical bills. Katie’s life started becoming hard and she found herself strapped for cash. An employee on the maintenance crew named Manuel quit his job and she saw that as an opportunity. Since Katie was the only person that worked in the office area who knew that Manuel quit, this was her opportunity to make some extra cash. There was no computerized time clock so the employees had paper time cards. They turned in the time cards to Katie and she signed off on them and sent them to the corporate office. Once the paychecks were processed, the corporate office would send them to Katie and she would distribute them. She cashed the first check that she received for Manuel at a liquor store. She saw that this scheme was working so she continued on with it. When the maintenance crew

References: Wells, J. T. (2011). Principles of fraud examination. (3 Ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc