What's the opposite of tax fraud? Oh, yeah, regular fraud.

Ok, so...I lied about ranting...


What we do here is balance the books. Just like balancing your checkbook at home.

It's easy:

There's a big number at the begining of the month
Then we tally all the buys and sells the client tells us to tally, and take in any payments, or pay out any expenses.

e-z.

So, theoretically, at the end of the month, the client sends us their big ending number
and it matches our big ending number - just like rocket science.

Anyway, my nightmare fund, is off.

By like twenty-one thousand.

-ish.

Which is significant. Not totally, hugely significant, but sort of a big deal.

So, my manager says, "we tied out last month, and all our trades are correct...it must be something that happened in those first few days of this month"

Because, well, our client is stupid.

Instead of sending us a begining number on the first of the month, like a good client would, they send us a begining number on the fifth. -ish.

And they expect that we can figure out any activity that happened between the first and the fifth, because, come on, it's only a week.

Which really isn't the best way to do business, but, as long as both client and us have our heads on straight it can be done.

Unfortunately (for me) neither the client, nor my manager, have their heads on straight

So, we're off twenty-one thousand.

That is, our number is higher than the clients - We've got extra money.

To normal people this would seem like an easy fix. 'Boca raton here I come', you know?

But that's not quite acceptible in finance due to "laws."

So, in order to tie out, my manager starts arbitrarily cancelling stuff on our books.

"We're off 21 thousand? well, here's a trade for seventeen thousand...if I cancel that...ok. Now we're only off by about four thousand"

"Here are some expense entries for 28, 330, 189...they total about seven hundred...cancel those, ok. Now we're only off about thirty-eight hundred"

"Hmm, they included interest earned in this trade....what if I rebook it without the interest? Ok. Good. We're down to about thirty-five hundred. Tom, why don't you see if you can find the rest of that money. I'm swamped today, already behind schedule."

Now, I don't think that this is strictly legal, because you're not supposed to do anything without client approval, but it's not strictly illegal either, because I'm pretty sure this isn't a final number.

Sure, we're on the hook when the auditors come around, but it's my understanding that the VP has to approve these numbers before it's official, so maybe my lazy manager is just trying to get it close enough to stall for time.

If he can give a good-looking bad-number to the VP and let him work out the mistakes, that buys us a couple days.

But the thing that I really can't figure out is this: my lazy manager already gave his notice
why is he even trying?

OK. It appears, earlier, when I said I wouldn't rant about this? I lied.

-t