Davis-Lynch, a Pearland, Texas-based maker of oil field equipment, had $14 million embezzled from the company accounts over a decades time, according to a federal lawsuit filed against 18 employees, including the head of the accounting department.
Its just the latest case of embezzlement by accounting workers. A study released last week by Marquet International found that two-thirds of embezzlement cases last year involved employees who held finance and accounting positions (see
Other defendants included several of Morenos family members and relatives. The scheme involved dummy companies with names that resembled those that Davis-Lynch already did business with billing the company for services. Davis-Lynch executives would then be tricked into signing checks to them, or their signatures would be forged. Some of the defendants also owned companies that would perform some services for Davis-Lynch but would continue to bill for services they didnt perform.
According to the Marquet study, the average embezzlement scheme lasted four-and-a-half years. In the Davis-Lynch case, the checks issued under the scheme date back to at least May of 2000. Thats not a surprising amount of time for a scheme to go uncovered, particularly when it allegedly involved at least four members of the accounting department.
The case in some ways is reminiscent of the D.C. Tax Office scandal, in which a group of employees and supervisors, and their family members, were involved in stealing $48.1 million by filing phony property tax refunds (see