Policy Improvement ACC-421 2-2 Paper The Trolly Dodgers is a professional baseball team that joined the National League in 1890. Here Edward Campos was hired, his position was an entry-level accountant who then worked his way up to the operations payroll chief. Edward Campos as payroll chief implemented a brand-new payroll system for the Trolly Dodgers, a system which Edward Campos can utilize. During this time Campos had the team's full trust as they saw Campos as a hard and dedicated worker who put the team first. Campos always completed payroll on time even while on vacation. Although over the course of several years, Campos embezzled nearly several hundred thousand dollars from Trolly Dodgers. Campos deliberately added fictional employees to the payroll in multiple departments to complete this embezzlement. Additionally, he overinflated the work hours of several employees and split the overtime pay 50-50 with those employees. A temporary payroll controller found his way to analyze the payroll and found several oddities, such as unusually high payments, this is what caused an audit on the Trolly Dodgers. In this case, there were multiple ways to prevent fraud from occurring. To start, one of the strongest ways to prevent fraud from occurring as it did, was to not allow Edward Campos to create his independent payroll system. Having a payroll system only one person can properly access, and control isn't the smartest decision. Using a common system, or a physical book system would have been a better, and potentially cheaper system. A secondary method that could
have prevented this case is the supervision of the payroll itself. The executives trusted Campos too deeply, even the most trusted should have some sort of supervision. This could have been done through post-analysis of payrolls to lower accountants, or even reported data to higher officials. The only major cost of this method is time, it is also one of the cheaper methods that could have been prevented. A third option would be to hire a payroll associate, it was common that even during Campos vacations, he would continue to oversee the payroll. While it may seem like a good work ethic, he wasn't scheduled to work. An additional payroll associate that can work alongside him would have also prevented this case. The cost of this would be fairly high, as it requires good competitive wages comparable to Campos's current wage position. Otherwise, a fourth option I would recommend is lowering the payroll position level to a lower accounting position. Having several employees work payroll, who then report to the payroll manager would also have been beneficial to the company. Rather, might be the most beneficial to the company as it produces redundancies in which fraud would be difficult to occur. Although this would mean an increase in employees and will increase the overall payroll expenses that are associated with it. A final option would be a yearly audit of all financial operations, including payroll. This would again be a solid redundancy for Trolly Dodgers,