Two math instructors in the Maricopa County Community College District have been accused of defrauding the taxpayers in an internal audit. The audit was performed at the request of both the Mesa and Scottsdale Community College presidents.
Critics say the allegations outlined in the audit are evidence that the Maricopa County Community College District Board has failed in its responsibility to provide oversight. Conservatives are blaming union control of the colleges for an environment that “generates a slap on the wrist and a patient one at that.”
The alleged fraudulent scheme involved two, as yet unnamed women, one of whom was employed as an instructor at Scottsdale Community College and the other was a Mesa Community College instructor. Their travel “irregularities” first came to the attention of Faculty Professional Growth (FPG) committee members.
”Full-time residential faculty members are eligible to attend educational conferences, workshops, or professional meetings, that serve to increase their knowledge or skills in which will enhance their role at their college. Individuals may apply for Faculty Professional Growth (FPG) funding to defray some of the related travel expenses incurred during attendance at these educational activities.”
”Such FPG funding request applications must be pre-approved by a Districtwide FPG Travel Committee. Each application is evaluated for eligibility, adequate justification, completeness, accuracy and available budget.”
”Eligible travel related expenses include transportation, lodging, registration, fees, meals, and other incidental expenses. When returning from the travel event/activity, travelers are required to create and submit an Expanse Report and may claim reimbursement for the actual eligible expenses for which they incurred.”
According to the audit, “Allegations regarding potential travel improprieties were first raised by FPG committee members, based upon November 2017 travel expense reimbursement claims submitted.”
The two faculty members, according to auditors, were working on co-authoring a mathematics textbook. The text book was published in July 2016 and made available to students in 2017.
Auditors concluded:
“Both the SCC and MCC faculty personnel have willingly and intentionally defrauded the District through the submission of approximately $6,640 in falsified travel expense reimbursement claims.”
“Each college should seek reimbursement from both Faculty persons for the net amounts in which they were fraudulently overpaid (SCC Faculty-$1,390\MCC Faculty-$2,330) for falsified travel expense reimbursement claims.”
“Working with the General Counsel’s Office and the Human Resources Solutions Center, the SCC and MCC administrations should consider disciplinary action, for the two faculty persons, who orchestrated the fraudulent misappropriation of District travel funds.”
Audit Findings:
During a five-year period, the two faculty persons traveled together to twelve separate educational conferences, submitting a total of 23 travel expense reimbursement claims. Of the 23 expense reimbursement claims examined, 16 (69%) had intentional errors or significant irregularities, (e.g., intentionally altered receipts, falsified receipts, duplicated expenses).
The two faculty persons regularly shared hotel lodging when traveling to the same educational conference. Shared expenses (e.g., hotel lodging) should be handled in one of two ways. One individual should either, personally pay the entire hotel invoice and claim the entire lodging expense; or the two individuals should each personally pay one-half of the hotel invoice and claim one-half of the lodging expense. Thereby, the expense reimbursement claim appropriately represents the expenses actually incurred by the individual.
Instead, on eight occasions in which lodging was shared, either one or both of the two faculty persons each willfully and intentionally chose to submit the same receipts for the entire lodging expense, within their individual expense reimbursement claims. Thereby, they intentionally claimed full lodging expense reimbursement, but paid less than the amount claimed, duplicating the expense and defrauding the District.
On one occasion, the hotel lodging expenses for each faculty person was pre-paid by a third party publishing company. In that particular instance, the SCC faculty person claimed the entire lodging expense and received the full District reimbursement without incurring any of the cost.
This fraudulent activity was not isolated to lodging expense. They also duplicated and shared other receipts, committing similar acts of fraud for shared local transportation expenses (e.g., taxi cabs), and shared parking fees (e.g., airport parking).
On multiple occasions, the two faculty persons each submitted altered or falsified hotel folio invoices in order to defraud the District.
The faculty person submitted altered hotel folio invoices. Thus, in order to ascertain the accuracy of their expense reimbursement claims, it was necessary to obtain confirmed hotel folio invoices and related information from the hotel providers.
On many occasions, the hotel providers could confirm the sharing of lodging by these two faculty persons. On other occasions, the hotel provider could not confirm whether one or the other faculty person had stayed as a guest because the reservation had been exclusively attached to only one faculty person.
In those situations, it was common for one faculty person to electronically share or forward their hotel folio invoice to the other faculty person. This sharing of hotel folio invoices was done, in order to allow the other faculty person the opportunity to alter the documents for their expense reimbursement claim submittal and illustrates intentional collusion to defraud the District.
SCC Faculty Person:
On at least four separate occasions, the SCC Faculty person either directly submitted altered hotel folio invoices herself, or colluded to assist the MCC Faculty person’s fraud activity, by forwarding her the hotel folio invoices for alteration.
The type of alterations that were evident on various hotel folio invoices, submitted for reimbursement included:
● Changed Guest Name to the other faculty person
● Deletion of Guest Address
● Deletion of Guest Address
● Deletion of Departure Time
● Revision of room rate from ½ rate to full rate
● Deletion of unallowable transactions (e.g., restaurant charge, health club charge, spa charge, parking fee)
● Revision of “Total Balance Due”
Deletion of payment transactions to certain VISA/MC numbers and corresponding standard language (e.g., ****For Authorization Purposes Only****)
● Deletion of Credit Card reference numbers belonging to other faculty person
● Transposed date fields
● Revision of actual amounts applied to Credit Cards
● Movement of signature box
Although evidence indicates otherwise, when the SCC Faculty person was questioned, she denied altering documents. Whether she personally altered the documents herself or was provided altered documents from the MCC Faculty person, she did submit altered hotel folio invoices and was certainly aware that such documents had been falsified.
MCC Faculty Person:
On at least five separate occasions, the MCC Faculty person either directly submitted altered hotel folio invoices herself, or colluded to assist the SCC Faculty person’s fraud activity, by forwarding her the hotel folio invoices for alteration. When questioned, the MCC Faculty person confirmed that she has regularly altered documents for inclusion within her and the SCC Faculty person’s expense reimbursement claims.