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Accounting News Roundup: Fraud, Fraud, Fraud | 04.23.18

Zelle, the Banks’ Answer to Venmo, Proves Vulnerable to Fraud [NYT]
I don’t know if “vulnerable” quite lives up to the severity of some these cases:

“I know of one bank that was experiencing a 90 percent fraud rate on Zelle transactions, which is insane,” said Genevieve Gimbert, a partner in PwC’s financial crimes unit. Most banks have strong authentication and fraud-detection controls for Zelle, she said, but some “just implemented it without any protections” like two-factor authentication and user-behavior monitoring.

“There are very few incidents” according to Early Warning Services, the consortium of banks that runs Zelle.

Ex-Employee Tried to Steal SunTrust Data [CFO]
Elsewhere in bank fraud stuff, SunTrust, the 12th largest bank in the U.S. by assets, is “proactively notifying approximately 1.5 million clients that certain information, such as name, address, phone number and certain account balances may have been exposed.”

County Accountant Pleads Guilty to Embezzling $2 Million [SBI]
File to Accountants Behaving Badly: Find a better hobby. Lynn Hogan pleaded guilty to stealing over $2 million from accounts under the Public Works Department of Santa Barbara County over 9 years. She’s only one of 9 defendants in this case, but the “exact relationship” between Hogan and her co-conspirators is not known, other than “they once bowled together.”

Previously, on Going Concern…

A webinar from out partner, FloQast: 5 Strategies for Streamlining Reconciliations in Excel.

Jason Bramwell interviewed a couple of CPAs who went back to school to become controllers at universities.

In Open Items, someone is wondering if their Big 4 internship offer will be rescinded.

In other news:

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