Corporate Investigations, Risk & Compliance, Fraud Investigations

Jerry Bamel received an allegation directly from an external company owner alleging that a technology company employee had been soliciting kickbacks from him in order to ensure his company was the sole regional distributor for the technology company’s products.  Jerry’s investigation confirmed that the company owner decided to come forward after becoming frustrated with the employee’s increasing kickback demands. Jerry’s investigation confirmed the company owner gave the technology company employee gifts which included a luxury watch,  admission to Disneyland for the employee and his/her family as well as confirming the employee solicited other gifts to maintain the sole distributorship of the company’s products. Prior to being interviewed the employee resigned.  

During a routine technology company audit which identified procurement anomalies Jerry Bamel led an internal investigation regarding purchases of office products by an employee at a technology company. Jerry’s investigation determined that an employee had procurement authorization and was purchasing large quantities of non-inventoried office products to include copy machine paper, batteries, computer printer cartridges and other office products which were then delivered to his home address. Jerry’s investigation determined that the employee then included those items for sale at a booth the employee maintained at a weekend flea market. The employee was terminated.  Jerry also recommended implementing additional procurement controls over non-inventory items.  

As part of a remote audit of a technology company’s credit card issued to employees for travel to determine if personal items were being purchased and expensed as having been incurred for business purposes, Jerry Bamel identified an employee with a significant number of expenses which appeared to be personal rather than business travel related which were submitted and approved for reimbursement. Those expenses included amongst other things as meals, transportation and entertainment which he/she could not have incurred during normal work hours as well as routinely upgrading hotel rooms to larger multi room suites. During the employee’s interview, the employee admitted to Jerry that he routinely took his spouse and child on his international travel and expensed all of their travel expenses they incurred as his and submitted them for reimbursement. The subject employee paid back all of the expenses inappropriately submitted as his/hers and a disciplinary letter was placed in his/her personnel file. The manager(s) responsible for reviewing and approving the subject’s expense reports were admonished for automatically approving  expense reports upon receipt without reviewing them for accuracy. 

Regional CFO of a technology company received information that a marketing manager was corruptly using his position for personal gain, Jerry Bamel led an investigation which determined that the marketing manager gave corporately purchased gift cards which were to be distributed to attendees at marketing events instead to his wife who then used them to make personal purchases of handbags and other items. Subsequent investigation determined that the manager also owned a marketing promotional product company he used to create large orders for promotional items to be distributed with the company’s logo at marketing events and then approved those invoices upon receipt; however, those products were never delivered for distribution at marketing events and the manager kept those funds. The manager was terminated.