Fake Expense Receipts

Anyone who wants to defraud their company's expense reimbursement system. The ExpressExpense receipt template for creating "fake receipts".

COMPLETE - The serious impact of counterfeit expenditure

McIntyre, an experienced Californian brokers, was excluded on Monday indefinitely from the security sector, in part due to a zero tolerence position by regulatory authorities. MacIntyre filed more than $4,000 in forged receipts from restaurants to reimburse Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, his employers until 2010, under a Financial Industries Regulatory Authority discipline.

McIntyre was dismissed by Morgan Stanley after he learned of the forged evidence he had presented for restitution in 2008 and 2009. This case illustrates the serious implications of a practise that is not unusual in the real estate or corporate America world. If you are kicked out of the security sector, the only basis for a broker's existence usually ends.

An examination of the FINRA data base on discipline penalties shows that eight decisions on cost accounting have been taken since 2010. All but one of them excluded agents from the sector for violations, up to and on one occasion, which included counterfeit cancelled cheques or counterfeit spending on trips to seminaries that never took place. However, the surviving agent, allegedly forging the signatures of superiors, consented to a one-year stay and was fined.

The desire for refund of expenditure not incurred is theft and lies. McIntyre conceded that his store director had never asked him to forge receipts, but the proposal to "throw something together" could have meant it. FINRA's zero tolerence position could also put some real estate agents in trouble when trying to recover legit expenditures, even those from missing receipts.

McClntyre also argued that some of his earnings had been wasted. McIntyre, whose discipline report was clear, but for a client complaints in his 27 years in the business, is "disappointed and disheartened by the ruling and the process," he said by e-mail. Today he is a realtor for Crowell, Weedon & Co in Pasadena, California, and is considering an appointment.

One Morgan Stanley spokesperson refused to make a statement. Manufacturing the cost of travelling and maintenance is standard practice among staff who are spending long periods away from home, said Allan Bachman, educational director of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) in Austin, Texas. There is a feeling of authority in some staff and a way of thinking that when asked about spending, they can just "explain everything away," Bachman said.

for forged receipts according to the order. Among other things, he claimed that he was covered by an expense reimbursement programme for which he had trained at Morgan Stanley. It made the income because other commercial expenditure it made was not considered for the programme.

Also, FINRA had no support for a Hawaii-based brokers being excluded in 2011. It tried to declare $2,700 in fake bills for a fictional "conference room rent" as a "mistake". "But the case also concerned a gray area: the realtor said he had used the funds for business furnishings after his company had postponed the refund by more than two years according to the discipline regulation.

The attempts to contact the brokers to make a statement were fruitless. It' s enticing to think that no one will look at the vast amount of expense claims filed with a major real estate firm, but that's not the case. Bachman, who led the in-house auditing divisions of several large companies, said that their roles included checking whether expense claims were justified.

Revisers are particularly paying close attention as regards travelling and maintenance costs, a breeding ground for cheating, Bachman said. These include checking the receipts of the hotels to determine whether the data matches the receipts for air trips. Brokers who dismiss advisors for expense reporting offences or other malpractice must include the notice of dismissal in the supervisory documents so that FINRA can easily identify and ask inquires.

But the most evident way to prevent hard rigor is just not to offset the costs. Sometimes there are moments when real estate agents are forced to forge receipts, e.g. when they really loose the original. In order to prevent this from happening, calculate as many costs as possible so that there are backup logs, said Marc Dobin, a Jupiter, Floridaorney.

He said that if you loose receipts for spending money, speak to your supervisor about how you can legally justify them. Otherwise, you may be excluded from FINRA, which may then say, "Look, we took another dishonest guy (broker) out of the system," Dobin said.