An Internal Auditing Case here.
TASK 1: Imagine you are Bret Anderson and have been provided the following employee productivity information. Consider the evidence presented in Exhibit 1.
1. Is the evidence strong enough to proceed with further investigation?
2. Are there any findings that can be an indication of fraud? Keep in mind that any further investigation will be disruptive, so any recommendation to proceed will require strong evidence.
3. Conduct a link analysis to investigate whether any of the data ties to a specific person.
TASK 2: This task uses the Auditing Alchemy video, which may be viewed by downloading the file from: (Links to an external site.) The file is approximately 1.4GB and requires about 4-6 minutes to download on a high-speed connection.
The video is an AVI format, which should run on most computer media players. The video runs approximately 7 minutes. You may view the video more than one time, but no additional information about the workplace is available other than what was used for Task 1.
Watch the video and follow along on a guided tour of Alchemy’s sphere production process. After viewing the video, answer the following questions:
1. What are the strengths of the internal control system that protects the sphere inventory from misstatement?
2. Is it possible to steal the valuable spheres without detection, and if so, how is this accomplished?
3. If it is possible to steal spheres, is there enough evidence to support that a crime has been committed? Why or why not?
TASK 3:. Write your final fraud report based on any information you have collected and the analysis from Tasks 1 and 2. At a minimum, your report should list:
• reason for believing a fraud has occurred
• a mechanism by which the fraud could be perpetrated,
• a likely suspect or suspects, and,
• a summary of the type of evidence used to reach your decision.
What are the strengths and weaknesses in your case? What else could you do (if anything) to make the case stronger? What other courses of action would you advise?