Cash Larceny (Part 11): Fictitious Void Transactions on Type 2 Cash Registers

Sally figured lunch breaks would lead to her big break.

She and her husband had mounting personal debts and escalating fights at home. As the supervisory cashier at a county health clinic, she often would fill in for a primary cashier during lunch periods and breaks. That's when she decided to exploit the organization's inadequate cash register internal controls and embezzle more than $16,000. She did it on cash registers that permit voids to be recorded during normal transaction processing.

Processing fictitious void transactions is a common type of cash register manipulation that cashiers use to misappropriate funds from their organizations. From my experience, cash registers record voided transactions in two ways. I discussed type 1 “ those that don't permit voids to be recorded during transaction processing “ in the March/April column. Here I'll describe the second way: frauds committed on what I call type 2 cash registers “ those that do permit voids to be recorded during normal transaction processing.