Finance Manager "accidentally" paid £80,000 into her own bank account!!

[Babooshka1234]

I need to rant and ask your thoughts about a member of staff who is in a managerial position responsible in HR & Finance yet is terrible at her job and the Director doesn't do anything about it. Have I become a bit too obsessed with this women and my lack of confidence in her ability and should also ignore it or can anything be done about it? I will list a few of the things she does... yesterday paid £80,000 into her own personal bank account in error because the banking app she uses is linked to both the business account and her personal account! Last year she almost lost the business £150,000 due to a scam again using this banking app, fortunately it was stopped just in time. She pays the wages for everyone and regularly changes them if she doesn't agree with the time sheets. And despite being told numerous times not to come to work early, she still comes in over an hour early to claim overtime at time & a half and daily plays the clocking in machine to her advantage yet stamps down on anyone else if they are a minute over or under their clocking in. There are so many other things she does to annoy people and I think most people in the office have no confidence in her yet she is allowed to continue. I think what annoys me is that she is in this position of responsibility and gets away with things like this.

I have experience of this. There was a useless woman in accounts who was in charge of payroll. MD became suspicious. Got auditors in. She had stolen £177,000 over the last three years. Went to prison. Was ordered to pay back about £17k. MD was devastated by it all. Never accepted the 17k, people lost their jobs, MD had a breakdown, lost all confidence because they had been let down by this trusted member of staff.

When I was telling a friend about all this recently, she said similar had happened in her organisation which was a completely different industry but very similar story. Bubbly, friendly, woman in accounts who was very trusted but could be a bit ditzy and forgetful. Turns out she netted about £244k of company money. The two women didn’t know each other but their circumstances were very similar. They were both early 40s, both single, both had teenage kids, lived about a mile from each other, both got on brilliantly with their male boss.

I’d be concerned that this ‘useless’ woman in payroll is actually pretty astute and is playing the game. Can you write an anonymous letter to the owner listing all her failings and highlighting the employees mistrust in her?

Either they are fucking now or they have in the past - the "even he complains about her" is a smokescreen. The "almost lost £150k" could have been gross misconduct, depending on the precise circumstances, but the repeatedly claiming OT when she's been told not to and the transfer of £80k into her own bank account "accidentally" are definitely gross misconduct and she'd be in possession of her P45 if she'd ever worked for me. I would be deeply suspicious of her coming into the office early too - what's she doing at that time? Maybe figuring out ways to defraud the company while no-one else is around?
Does the MD also own the company OP? If not, I would be whistle-blowing to the owner of the company (you can check ownership on Companies House). If she brings the company down that would be 50 jobs lost - everyone involved with the company needs to understand this.

I’d be contacting HMRC on the pre-text of checking your tax deductions and then tell them your concerns and say you’re worried that because she’s altering so many things, you’re not sure your pay has been properly handled.

I approve manual payments at the place I work and there are so many segregation of duties and approvals that are followed to make sure people don’t fck it up, and it’s not some huge company. The ability to pay £80k into her own bank account is mind boggling, let alone to ability to change payroll on a whim.

It's a real email from the bank - but clearly their security isn't up to scratch.

There is no such thing as a secure e-mail — anyone can send you a mail that appears to come from [email protected] or whoever. The protocols that send e-mails were designed in the late 1960s when anyone who had access to a computer was unlikely to be trying to scam the general public. Gmail has identified that the content of the mail suggests that it is finance-related and is just suggesting that you need to be careful. It has not identified any specific security issue that Lloyds could have done anything about.

A real security problem would be if the e-mail contained a link to click on (out of interest, did it?). Banks that takes security seriously will tell you to log in to the app or website but will not provide a link — they want you to develop the reflex of not clicking.

(It's interesting that it's from Lloyds. When DD opened an account with them in 2009 the person in the branch carefully pointed out "You will notice that we have not asked for your e-mail address. That's because we never send out e-mails. Any e-mail claiming to be from Lloyds is fake.", which I thought was a pretty good way to do it — all communication was in the online banking website, or later in the app. But apparently they have changed since then.)

If the woman is also a 'qualified accountant' then I'd report her to the relevant professional body that she belongs to. Also, report the company to HMRC and say that there aren't enough financial checks and balances in place. The company accountant is committing fraud and paying herself £80k, that's not a mistake. This is fraud and stealing money.

How do you know these things OP? Does she state she has made these cockups ? Or are you in accounts and can see them? Is the MD also the owner? Because if so they are negligent- they should have dual controls in place . I have a business and it’s not that easy to make that kind of cock up, because if they are with the same bank then in order to pay yourself you would hit the transfer button rather than pay an external person under the ‘pay’ button- who was the £80k meant to be going to ? If it was another internal account of the business, she needs to arrange to delink her personal account as it’s nothing to do with the business . That’s easy to do with the bank . If the owner isn’t the MD I wonder if he/she is aware of all this? If they are both owner/MD then whilst it’s annoying it’s out your control if they are aware of it and one day will bite him on the arse. I’m not sure these cockups aren’t deliberate and testing the waters to see if it’s noticed

And I say this by the Wayne aide many years ago when I was HR/ office manager at a mid sized company and our finance director was defrauding the company . ( gambling problem) it only came to light when someone covered them for holiday and queried a lot of regular transactions that he couldn’t find in invoicing system when reconciling back statements .

I think this is your best option OP. Then, start looking for a new job. Also, document everything. Everything you do, all your clocking times, any interactions between you and her. Cover your own back.

Agree with other PPs, there is something else going which you are not party to. Be very careful in what you say and to whom.

Whistleblowing never ends well for the whistleblower, so if you go down that route have all the facts, dates, times, amounts, conversations had.

For your own peace of mind, change jobs sooner rather than later.

Are there employees earning at or close to minimum wage at the company? If you want HMRC to act then you'll have a much better response reporting a minimum wage concern than anything to do with tax. Eg if you have employees close to min wage and she is amending time sheets then the company isn't paying min wage for the time those employees are working. Min wage checks are, rightly, a fucker to deal with even when you have good controls.

It Is very likely she is coming in early because she can’t do her job within her normal hours due to incompetence… She needs the extra hours to get through the work required of her. We have this same problem. It’s disguised as commitment but it’s actually incompetence.

By any chance, is it a Barclays banking app?

I'd be wondering what else she was up to with these early starts, because who knows what other stuff she's up to during those periods.

I know the job market is pretty crap atm, but I'd be looking. Realistically if her superiors know, but don't do anything about it, it doesn't bode well for the future viability.

I hope the employees who are getting their pay messed around with are complaining.

Methinks she has her fingers in the till.....

How do you know about all of these incidents, changing of wages etc

While I agree this is awful, I just thought I'd add my perspective of something I've just realised I've done. I have my business and personal accounts on my NatWest app.

The other week I went to transfer some money to myself from the personal account. I was in the personal account screen and clicked "Payments" on the bottom and transferred the money.

Today, my bookkeeper asked me how to account for the money and I realised the app had defaulted to my business account, rather than the personal account I'd been in when I selected the payment.

Thankfully it was much smaller an amount and I've transferred it back today, but it can be easily done, especially on the NatWest app.

Given this woman's history though, I would be highly recommending switching to a banking system that requires second authorisation for large payments!

Completely this.

I’m an accountant and there is no way I would ever mix up the company’s and my momey. It’s unforgivable and against professional standards. I’m scrupulous about segregation of duties to safeguard myself and others.

I also def wouldn't very surprised if she was fiddling the books....

I would whistleblow to the auditors. When I was involved in a similar sort of situation, it turned out that the CEO and some of the board were involved in a major scam. I was an interim deputy to said CEO, and one of the alarm bells was that the Finance Manager resigned on my first day in post. I contacted some previous auditors for advice, and the main thing they told me was to document EVERYTHING. Which I did. When the police eventually came knocking I was able to demonstrate I had not been involved except as an innocent interim cover trying to keep the organisation afloat (it folded once the scale of the deception was uncovered).

I would whistleblow this to the Chair of the Audit Committee if there is one, or if not, the Chair of the Board. They have a duty to manage risk for the company, so would be very interested in these types of “errors’.

Or she is defrauding the company and getting up to all sorts when she is the only person in the office in the mornings. Or she's fiddling her timesheets by saying she's working an extra hour every day to clock up overtime but is actually doing her online shopping and personal emails.

Sorry to sound cynical but I work in HR and nothing would surprise me anymore. This woman is raising so many red flags that I suspect she isn't as ditsy and incompetent as she is letting on and a proper audit would uncover a lot.

However OP....you need to consider how you know this information and your own job here. You're part of the admin team so wouldn't have any part of her employment relationship. If she was given a written warning you should have no idea about it. I suspect she hasn't been due to ineffectual senior management but that's besides the point. Are you listening to the office gossip or are you the PA to the MD so have seen the emails? I ask because you have to be careful what accusations you are making. If I worked at your company I could identify you just from this post I bet.

I do agree with PPs that an anonymous tip off to HMRC could be illuminating but I'd be very careful nothing can be traced back to you.

curious about all the NI & tax comments. If they are feeding the timesheets into the payroll software, there are zero issues. What you pay in tax NI is what shows on your wage slip.

Where the issue comes is changing the actual hours worked.

Is her name Rachel?

I am too, and do the same. However, Barclays has a ‘glitch’ where if you bank personally with Barclays (or hold a barclaycard), as soon as you are added to a Barclays business account, it jumps immediately into your personal app for BC or BB, and it is the default account. You go to make a payment, and it defaults to the business account, and so on.

I don’t have a bank account, only a Barclaycard, so while it’s mildly irritating and a bit weird, it doesn’t impact me. However, it’s caused a couple of directors issues. It’s payments not receipts though (you think you’re paying X person from your personal account and it’s glitched back to the business one). As an external accountant, I would have insisted I was removed from the business bank account if I had a Barclays Bank account personally as it is far too easy to make a mistake and it’s a stress I don’t need. Internal employees tend to be more lax, from what I’ve seen (talking about SME not large corporate environments).

I couldn’t agree more with the poster who asked OP to really think about how she knows this and who is telling her.

there are overwhelming number of suggestions/ instructions in this thread. As someone who does this type of investigation fora living most of them are no good.

the most important thing OP is that you resign and get another job first. From what you’ve said you are unlikely to survive any action you take with your employment in tact. But again, this goes back to how accurate your knowledge of the situation is.