FRAUDD EXAMINATION

Case 4

Stephanie Adkins is an accountant who is trained in forensic accounting. She is an experienced fraud investigator. She was recently hired by Lake Side Hotels, a closely-held corporation, to investigate a company manager who is suspected of taking kickbacks from vendors.

Stephanie gave Lake Side her standard engagement letter stating that the scope of the engagement would be limited to investigating only one suspect. It did not guarantee findings or results.

According to the provisions of Stephanie’s engagement, she was to communicate directly with Bernie James, the company’s controller, and Amanda Peterson, the outside attorney.

At the first meeting of this team, Bernie indicated that Lake Side had received four separate anonymous tips about possible kickbacks. All the tips indicated that Laurie Miller, an evening manager, was taking kickbacks from food vendors. One tip named a particular vendor, the Mid States Beef Source, a company that supplies meat to the hotel’s restaurants.

Stephanie asked if Bernie had any documentation that supports Laurie Miller’s possible involvement in kickbacks. Bernie had no documentation but hoped Stephanie could help them substantiate the information from the anonymous tips. He was concerned that kickbacks would hurt the hotel financially.

Amanda, the outside attorney, said that she had already talked to several hotel employees and was convinced that Laurie was guilty.

Kickback schemes can be difficult to uncover, so Stephanie wanted to proceed cautiously.

Bernie wanted to confront Laurie immediately. He was convinced she would confess if he told her that he had evidence against her.

Stephanie asked what evidence Bernie had. Bernie said, “Only the anonymous tips, but I know she will confess if we bluff.” It was against Stephanie’s professional principles to lie and she said so.

“Detectives do it all the time on cop shows,” Bernie said. Stephanie insisted she would need to run the investigation her way or she wouldn’t be able to undertake this engagement.

In relation to this scenario, write responses to the following:

What steps might Stephanie follow to proceed with her investigation?

What mistakes, if any, have already been made in the investigation?

Covert a Hexadecimal to decimal (there is a video for you to watch too). Then write a program that can convert a binary to decimal (only for integer case).

There are two ways to do so.

Easy way: Directly use Java built-in method to do this. In this case, only couple lines of code. Hint: Study Integer class in Java.

Hard way: Write your own code to convert a binary to decimal from scratch. The input is a binary string. The program output is its corresponding decimal value. This way you need to design the algorithm.

Student need to do both ways and test them correctly to get 100% credit. If student only did one way or another, the maximum grade is 80%.

Northwood Company Manufactures basketballs. The company has a ball that sells for $25. At present, the ball is manufactured in a small plant that relies heavily on direct labour workers. Therefore, the variable costs are high, totaling $15 per ball. Assuming that the new plant is built and the next year the manufactures and sells 30,000 balls (the same number as sold last year). The contribution income is: Sales - 750,000, less: variable expenses - 270,000. Thus, contribution margin is 480,000, less fixed expenses: 420,000. Net Income would be $60,000.  

Degree of operating leverage is 480,000/60,000 = 8.00

If you were a member of top management, would you have been in favor of constructing the new plant? Explain.

Your assignment is to imagine you’re in charge of your local public health department for your community. Your department has the chance to apply for funding under the umbrella of the WHO Essential Public Health Function (EHPF) framework to fund one public health issue in your community. What public health issue will you address, and what intervention will you design? In your paper, be sure to address:

·        The public health issue and its impact on health - make your case that it’s important!

·        How the intervention will address the health issue

·        How the intervention affects different health determinants (including the social and built environment)

·        What aspect of the EHPF framework your intervention falls under

Susie Sampson was recently promoted to be a manager of a department where she previously had not worked. When she met with her team, she learned that they liked to put a lot of “slack” in their budget numbers to ensure success, which would translate to bonus For example, to determine their costs, they would use the three least efficient months of the previous year to calculate their costs. She is not comfortable with their process and has never seen it used in previous departments.

1. Can Susie justify this built-in budgetary slack?
2. Do you believe this approach is ethical?
3. How will her department members feel if she changes their approach to budgeting?
4. If you were in Susie’s position, what would you do?

The "over-the-air" television channel 13 operates between frequencies 210 MHz and 216 MHz, with the video and audio using different parts of this frequency range. To watch (and listen) to the channel properly, the tuner circuit in a television must resonate in the middle of this range (213 MHz) and produce a current over the whole range of at least 50% of the peak current at resonant frequency.

A particular television tuning circuit is built with a 17.3 pF capacitor, a variable inductor, and a variable resistor. What value should the resistor be in order for the current at both 210 MHz and 216 MHz to be at least 50% of the current at the resonant frequency?

Hint:You'll have to first calculate the value of the inductor so that the television tunes to channel 13.

Give reasons for the following statements (4 – 5 lines)

1. Underwriting is not compulsory; despite this, a number of reputed companies for their public issue go in for at least partial underwriting

2. While the percentage allotment for non-retail investors in a book-built issue is the maximum, the % allotted to retail investors is the minimum

3. Any VCF wants to exercise exit option say after 5 years of funding

4. VCF does not do angel funding or incubation funding in India whereas this is being done regularly by them in foreign countries

5. A sharebroker is the only common service intermediary between the primary and secondary markets; his role is different. What are his roles in these two segments?