Reference no: EM132993389

Question - Shortly after Travis got promoted as a store manager at a local Zip-In convenience store, he had an opportunity to fill in at another Zip-In convenience store where Amanda was the store manager. While Amanda was on her mandatory 2-week vacation, Travis took care of all her day to-day operations, including the filing of paperwork. While catching up on some month-end reporting, Travis found that reconciliations of the weekly money order sales had not been done in 8 months. He also found some errors in the reports that Amanda sent to the corporate office right before she left on her vacation. Travis contacted Amanda about the errors that he found. Amanda said she would take care of the problem when she returned from vacation. Following company fraud reporting procedures, Travis also reported the errors to his supervisor. The supervisor asked Travis to investigate the suspicious activities.

Travis' investigation revealed that Amanda was using some of the money orders sold in her store to pay her personal bills, including the rent on her house. The money orders are prenumbered and are stored in the vault of the store. Travis performed an audit on the money-order number sequence, and found gaps in the sequence. The missing money orders caused the cash register to be short which caused the corporate office to be suspicious, although no follow-up was done until Travis reported his suspicions while Amanda was on vacation. The corporate office started investigating Amanda's paperwork and found the money orders she used to make rent and other credit card payments were cashed by a regional manager, Joe, at the corporate office. It was determined that Amanda was renting a house from Joe. After it was confirmed that Amanda was using company funds for personal use, she was fired and was prosecuted. Further investigation was required as to Joe's involvement in the fraudulent activities. What were the "red flags" for potential fraud that Travis noticed?