Mail Fraud, Tax Evasion, and Embezzlement, Oh My!

Employee embezzlement and fraud cost business big bucks

The federal government takes mail fraud and tax evasion very seriously, and businesses are always looking for new ways to prevent embezzlement. When Hailey Keele, a North Ogden resident, pled guilty to all three, she knew she would be facing steep penalties.

During the trial, Keele confessed to an eight-year-long embezzlement scheme in which she stole nearly $850,000. Keele’s scheme consisted of obtaining signed checks from her supervisors to pay the company’s credit card expenses. Keele had also set up automatic payments for the card, resulting in overpayments to American Express. Keele committed mail fraud when she requested and received by mail a refund for the overpayments that amounted to over $36,000. Keele also used the checks to pay for her personal American Express credit card and evaded taxes by neglecting to disclose the stolen income, which amounted to over $300,000. Due to these three charges, Keele could be facing up to 25 years in prison, along with the government seizing all her illegally obtained assets.

It is paramount that businesses prevent embezzlement and other forms of financial fraud in order to maintain a good, profitable business model. When employees skillfully omit information or misrepresent their projects, it is extremely difficult for leaders to know who is being deceptive and who is being honest. The ideal, of course, would be to only hire honest employees. It is next to impossible to grasp someone’s true character in job interviews that are often as short as the list of those who have never told a lie.

The good news is that Converus® has developed a test that can help find those who are honest. This test, called EyeDetect®, takes as little as 30 minutes and gives immediate results (based on a computerized algorithm), rating the test taker on their probability of being honest or deceptive. During rigorous trials, EyeDetect was able to identify a deceptive individual 86% of the time, which is very close to the accuracy of the more traditional polygraph. EyeDetect is far less invasive, tracking only eye movement and involuntary pupil dilation to calculate the examinee’s final score. If Keele were to take this test, her embezzlement scheme would not have lasted those eight years and her company would have saved thousands of dollars. In fact, Keele may not have even considered embezzling if she knew she would be held accountable through such a test. EyeDetect is already helping businesses around the world save time and money as they implement it into their hiring processes. What could EyeDetect do for you?

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Photo by /Lucia Grzeskiewicz