As he wrote, he took notes. For minor errors, he jotted off email memos to affected departments. Sometimes it was transcribed billing codes, when something was billed to one department but delivered to another. In other cases, invoice amounts were transcribed or missing digits.
It was almost eleven o’clock when Gene spotted the first serious discrepancy. At first, he thought it was just a case of Gary Mitchell running out his fiscal year budget. It was improper, of course, but nothing Gene could do anything about. However, as Gene kept looking through the expenditures, he noticed that Mitchell had spent every penny of every budget under his control.
Well, that wasn’t quite true on a second look. Flipping back and forth through the printouts, Gene realized that Mitchell had actually underspent each budget by exactly one cent. Gene sat up and unconsciously tapped his pencil on the table. If a budget was completely spent or overspent, that generated a memo that went to the responsible manager, their manager, and the finance department. If a budget was underspent, on the other hand, it was unlikely to be reviewed or attract much attention.
Gene looked again at the paper work. Mitchell had a total of fifty-eight independent projects under his authority, each with their own allocated budget dollars. That was fifty-eight independent projects with one cent remaining in each budget. That kind of careful planning pointed to a deception. The only person in common across those fifty-eight budgets was Gary Mitchell, so it was likely that the responsible person was either Gary or someone who had signature authority for him.
Gene prepared himself for a late night. He wouldn’t be done until he had gone through every one of the three hundred and fifty pages of the budget print out. This was a major discovery. What had Gary Mitchell spent that money on?
In spite of Gene’s vigil, through the abandoned hallways of Avogadro, Christmas lights twinkled, and all was silent.
From: Gary Mitchell (Communications Products, Avogadro)
To: Oliver Weinstein (Department of Technology, Germany)
Subject: Avogadro Wireless Program
Hello Oliver,
How are you? It’s been a long time since my last visit to Germany. I still remember our last get together fondly. Maybe a little less beer next time?
I am writing to give you the inside scoop on a new project we have. Avogadro is developing a new technology product suite targeted at national governments.
The new service we’re offering is our cloud-based application architecture: comprehensive email, chat, web servers, cloud-based documents, online backup. As you know, Avogadro has the highest up-time and reliability in the industry.
If Germany is willing to be the poster child for our new services, we’re prepared to offer free national wireless internet access for all of Germany. This would give Germany the highest internet connection rates in world, and a significant technology advantage.
I know that you have the ear of the Minister of Technology. Would you broach this topic with him? Our marketing department is prepared to reach out to other governments. But I know that you’d like to score some points with the Minister, so I’m letting you know early about this.
Get back to me and let me know what he says.
Chapter 8
Gene Keyes waited outside Maggie Reynolds’ office on the first business day of the New Year. He had spent the last ten days confirming his data and validating his conclusions. Well, he could be honest with himself. He had done all that in the first two days, and then spent eight days cooling his heels waiting for anyone in the damn company to get back from holiday vacation.
Gene glanced at his watch, saw that it was five minutes to eight, and resumed waiting with only the smallest of sighs. Maggie, a member of the Finance department, assigned to the Procurement group, had authorized several of the charges. So the first action he planned to take was to confirm the data with Maggie in person. He had brought his paper file showing the unusual expenditures: a thick accordion folder, nearly bursting. He wished he could have escalated the issue when he’d found it in the first place, but the established process for investigating these things required him to complete at least a first round of discussions with people who had handled the transactions.
At eight, he saw Maggie approaching carrying a coffee cup in one hand, with a large purse in her other. As she got closer, her face turned puzzled as she realized that Gene was waiting outside her office door.
“Hello?” she asked, turning it into a question. She paused outside the door.
“I’m Gene Keyes. You came to my office for help a few weeks ago.”
She nodded.
“I’m investigating some irregularities in purchase orders since I last saw you.”
“Oh.” She paused, still holding her coffee cup in one hand and purse dangling from the other. “Oh,” she said again, more sharply. “What can I do for you?”
“Can we go into your office and sit down?” Gene gestured toward her door with the accordion folder.
“Of course, of course,” Maggie said hurriedly. She handed her coffee cup to Gene, and then swiped her ID badge to unlock the door. “Come in.”
Gene looked around as they entered the office. Clean, organized. He put the coffee cup down on her desk.
Maggie went around her desk, then sat down, sitting straight upright, looking like a student trying to impress a teacher. “What is it? Did I sign something I shouldn’t have?”
“I am hoping you can explain it to me.” Gene methodically took a seat, put his accordion folder in front of him, and took out a single page, the sheet rasping against the other tightly bound papers.
Maggie nervously fiddled with her hair.
“Does this look familiar?” Gene finally asked, putting the page in front of Maggie. “It’s from Gary Mitchell’s division. You can see there are multiple purchases. It starts with these charges for the ELOPe project. Then, over the course of the next two weeks, there are thirty four more purchase orders that were outside the normal expenditure range for Mitchell’s expenses. Furthermore, the billing is highly irregular in that they are split across multiple accounts.”
“I do remember this,” Maggie said, her hands shaking slightly as she took the printout. “Oh, I’m so sorry if I did anything wrong. I was concerned about the purchases when I first saw them. But I talked to John Anderson in Procurement about them. He said they were normal end of the year behavior because departments usually try to spend the leftover money in their budget.”
“That’s true, but not like this. You can see that the expenditures are distributed against dozens of budgets. This one charge…” Gene paused to remove more paper from his briefcase, this set of printouts showing how the charges were allocated to project budgets. Gene found the relevant line item, pointed it out on the print out, and continued, “This one charge is distributed against forty-nine accounts. You see, not only are they spending all the money left in their budgets, but they’re also ensuring that each expenditure doesn’t take more than one million from any one account — that would trigger an executive level review of the expense.” Gene paused to study Maggie.
“Sounds like someone deliberately manipulating the system to avoid being detected,” Maggie answered. She leaned forward, and started tracing through the print out with one finger. She went quickly through several pages, unconscious of Gene’s scrutiny.
“That’s right.” Gene paused to extract another set of papers from his folder. “Here’s another little bit of odd behavior.” Gene turned the papers around and slid them across the desk. “By the end of this reporting period, each budget has exactly one penny left in it.”