Partnership for a Greater Greenwood County

“On july 15, 2016 an employee was terminated from employment with the greenwood partnership alliance. As part of our exit process, the employee turned in all assets to the company; however, she was unable to unlock her work provided cell phone, thus rendering it useless and she also claimed not to have her work credit card on her. Our team called the credit card company to terminate her card and requested the last five charges made on the account. Upon learning that the last five were all purchases of a personal nature, we requested copies of all statements for the full fiscal year prior. We did this because upon looking for the file in accounts payable, there were none. We then moved forward with hiring a forensic auditor to do a full investigation of the finances of the organization. A copy of this report shows that there were personal charges in excess of $77k taken in a fraudulent manner in the 2015 fy and additional a few thousand in the 2016 fy. The employee had been given a credit card with $1,000 limit to purchase office supplies, drinks, coffee, lunch for board meetings, but within the coming year, forged signatures and increased her own spending limit to $15,000 while also pretending to be the ceo and accessing all online accounts and banking through permission granted by the institutions to change the password when the employee used the ceo's personal info (dob, ssn) and passwords. While the forensic auditor, the accountant preparing our annual audit, and our accountants involved in bookkeeping all believed that we had the appropriate internal controls in place, you cannot protect yourself from all scenarios as was proven with this incident. In an effort to further strengthen the internal controls of the gpa, we have added acknowledgement statements for all those individuals who have credit cards explaining allowed uses and consequences if misused; we have added a signature page to each credit card statement acknowledging that each expenditure was just and appropriate for the named business of the gpa; only the ceo now opens the credit card statements; the ceo and accountants now have online access to all banking and other accounts; the external accountant is now responsible for the entire ap/ar process, taking it out of the hands of the gpa, with approval of reports by the ceo; there is an exact copy of all transactions and reports kept at both the gpa and the accountants office in the event one or the other is misplaced; limits on cards were again reduced and each month the limit is checked for consistency; credit cards statements, as well as the charge of accounts detail from quickbooks are provided to the ceo and finance committee each month; the account reconciles the banks statements and provides to the ceo for approval. There have not been any vocalized concerns; only regret that it happened. Our board is confident that we have taken the necessary steps to prevent a future occurrence.”

“Form 990 is made available to the board for review prior to filing.”

“Requires annual disclosure of potential conflicts of interest by governing board and key employees.”

“Compensation is determined by use of comparable wages paid to other south carolina economic development officers. Employees are paid directly by greenwood county, south carolina.”

“AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST”

“AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST”

“This process is unchanged from the prior year.”