1-3 Short Paper: Fraud Article
For at least 7 years, a New Jersey woman named Angela DiPietro-Sabatine was
successful in stealing $2.6 million from her employer, Delaware River Waterfront Corporation
(DRWC). DRWC is a non-profit, quasi-governmental entity that was involved in the design,
development, and management of the central Delaware River waterfront from Oregon to
Allegheny Avenues for the benefit of Philadelphia residents (US Official News, 2021). DiPietro
Sabatine was employed as the Accounting Administrator whose duties were to oversee the
company's accounts payable and receivable, account reconciliation, and general ledger. After
being fired over unrelated performance issues, the company began to look deeper into
unexplainable discrepancies within its accounting books and found DiPietro-Sabatine had
regularly used her position to create false expense items for legitimate vendors of DRWC,
invoicing services that were never rendered and forging the signatures of nonprofit executives so
she could transfer money into her own account (Us Official News, 2021). These payments went
undetected by the organization's auditors due to her use of legitimate seller information and
ability to enter the accounting system and manually update the payment information. She then
spent these embezzled funds on personal expenses, including multiple luxurious vacations and a
pricy gambling habit. DRWC charged her with 10 counts of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud,
and three counts of aggravated identity theft (Us Official News, 2021)
Although it seems this case of fraud could have easily been avoided, small companies
and non-profits often place a large amount of trust in their accountants to avoid the extra expense
of the additional payroll that ensures segregation of duties. According to "Fraud Auditing and
Forensic Accounting", 88.7 percent of all frauds involve asset misappropriation and tips, and
complaints account for 46.2 percent of initial fraud detection (Singleton, T., Singleton, A., 2010).
This explains why an accountant who oversees the majority of a company's accounting processes
could easily cover up the use of company funds for personal use without another employee
catching onto the scheme, especially when others in the company have little to no knowledge of
how the accounting software truly works. It is vital that company managers have a firm
understanding of daily activities and review reconciliation records frequently to ensure
employees are not engaged in activities such as asset misappropriation. Also, information
processing controls may have a steep initial cost but will tremendously help check the accuracy
completeness, and authorization of transactions within the database (Singleton, T., Singleton, A..
2010). While the fraud at DRWC was not detrimental to the company because it spanned a large
amount of time, the cost of internal controls would have cost a fraction of the $2.6 million and
played a significant role in DiPietro-Sabatini's ability to go unnoticed.
Reference
Former DRWC Bookkeeper Charged With Stealing $2.6 Million. US Official News. (April 27,
2021). Accessed March 10, 2022. https://search-ebscohost-
com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=edsgin&AN=edsgcl.659936652&site=eds-live&scope=site
Singleton, T. W. & Singleton, A. J. (2010). Fraud auditing and forensic accounting. (4th ed).
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.