Examining fraud and abuse in trade-skill education programs

Hundreds of taxpayer-supported public high schools and colleges offer trade-skill programs that enable many to pursue lifelong technical careers. However, fraud examiners often are faced with a common roadblock when they investigate these programs: a lack of documentation of financial transactions. Program directors and employees often don't create records when students pay their school bills or they immediately destroy them after student projects are completed. Therefore, entities and fraud examiners can't properly analyze these programs because it's impossible to determine the total number and value of all transactions that have occurred over a period of time.

We'll focus on this challenge and others as we discuss some of the special situations of examining trade-skill education programs in this column followed by a two-part complex fraud case study on the topic.

SKIMMING IS THE FRAUD OF CHOICE