Pardon my ignorance, but do you guys and gals picture internal auditors working in windowless broom closets, only leaving when they have to catch a plane to some remote location in flyover country to conduct procedures that they've done so many times that they dream about checklists and, on the rare occasion, find inconsequential errors that were the result of an honest mistake that results in no meaningful action one way or another?
No? Just me? Okay, well I guess it won't surprise you at all that sometimes an internal audit will find not only an error, but a crime! At a government agency! In Louisiana!
More than $800,000 in public money was allegedly misappropriated by an employee at the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, according to a news release from the agency. The theft was uncovered during an internal investigation.The agency's Bureau of Health Care integrity discovered the alleged theft after officials noticed some unusual accounting practice involving the employee, according to DHH. The employee allegedly deposited checks to the department in a non-DHH account and then withdrew the money for personal use, according to the release.
Of course the DHH Secretary, Bruce Greenstein, was mostly pissed that such an event could occur and didn't bother giving any credit to the IA sleuths who uncovered the missing money. So if there's one stereotype of internal auditors that was confirmed, it's that they don't really get much credit for doing their jobs.
