A. Susan is an accounts payable clerk.

She sets up creditors in a financial database and pays invoices

as they come in. Last year, she won employee of the year and is a valued employee. Through the
grapevine, Susan's boss just learned that Susan's brother has a gambling problem.

In this case, yes, there is a potential problem since if Susan’s brother became desperate of money
because of gambling issues, Susan, being the accounts payable clerk, can pay fictitious invoices in the
company and this is known as the accounts payable fraud. And this involves the three components in
the fraud triangle. Primarily, since there is a potential financial need because of Susan’s brother, there is
an incentive for Susan to do such fraud. Secondly, being an accounts payable clerk, Susan has the
opportunity to manipulate invoices. Lastly, Susan may have the rationalization that since she won
employee of the year and is a valued employee, the company won’t doubt her performance.

B. Now suppose that Susan from situation A is now secretary for the head of the marketing
department. She keeps track of the vice president of marketing's schedule and handles the
correspondence.

No, there would be no potential problem since Susan only tracks and monitors the schedule of the vice
president in marketing and its correspondence. If ever his brother struggles from lack of financial
resources, Susan has no opportunity to perform fraud.

C. Keith has been employed for 6 months as a teller at a community bank. All is going well, and his
cash drawer has had shortages only twice (of less than P500). The shortages were traced and the
problems corrected.

In this scenario, there is a problem since Keith might initially have stolen those little amounts causing
those shortages. Since he is a teller, he has the opportunity to steal any time and he might have the
rationalization that the bank won’t be able to notice or the bank would just slip the small amount.
However, every penny counts especially in the bank. Fortunately, the bank was quick to trace the
shortage and immediately acted upon on it.

D. At the company Memorial Day picnic and golf outing last week, Nancy noticed that June moved
her ball to a better lie when she thought no one was looking. There were no prizes for a low score,
and June did not benefit from the lower score that resulted.

There is a potential problem in this situation since even if there were no prizes and or no one’s looking,
honesty is always the best policy. And June might carry this attitude in his work place which is not a
good practice of ethics. In this case, the components in the fraud triangle present is opportunity and
rationalization. June has the opportunity to move Nancy’s ball to a better lie since he has this
rationalization that Nancy was not looking, hence, he would not get caught by his sneaky action.