'This just couldn't be detected.' Fired Berkeley County schools auditor stands by clean report

[TexasTowelie]

Last edited Mon Feb 20, 2017, 08:49 PM - Edit history (1)

The auditor fired by the Berkeley County School District defended the clean annual report he gave the district just a month before officials learned about a federal probe into almost $400,000 in missing money.

The board voted Feb. 14 to cut ties with Greene, Finney & Horton, which presented its audit report Jan. 10. The review did not examine every transaction but instead relied on an often-used practice of sampling, accountant Larry Finney said at the time. The firm's clients include about 20 schools districts, 20 cities and a handful of counties.

“We stand by everything we’ve done, and we believe we did a great audit,” Finney, a partner in the Greenville-based firm, which has not been part of the investigation, told The Post and Courier on Monday. “This just couldn’t be detected.”

Berkeley Chief Financial Officer Brantley Thomas, who had worked for the district since 1993, was fired Feb. 7 after officials learned that Wells Fargo banking and the FBI were investigating missing funds. Thomas, 60, oversaw all of the district’s accounts, including its nearly $260 million general fund.

Read more: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/this-just-couldn-t-be-detected-fired-berkeley-county-schools/article_234bb880-f7a0-11e6-bfee-a371ff1e35ee.html

[Laffy Kat]

1. Why bother to audit at all if you admit you can easily miss a $400K deficit?

[TexasTowelie]

2. I have very little respect for auditors.

When I received audited data one time when I worked for the state it was supposed to represent over a billion dollars in transactions. When the data was keyed into a spreadsheet the total was about $350 million.

At another employer we had to go through the process of having one of the major auditors certify our process. It was merely an exercise to show that we have a paper trail from the point of intake, recording the information, sending internal emails and having a different employee sign off of what the first employee produced. It wouldn't find a problem like what was described in the article and was a big waste of time generating paper work that nobody will ever look at again in the future.

I also resented the fact that a 30-ish MBA who has no other qualifications and has never had to meet a set of deadlines is trying to instruct someone with a bachelors degree and twenty years of experience on how to do their job. I can assure anyone that if I audited any of the work they produced then I would find the flaws in their process and their work very quickly just as I found the flaws in the work product of actuaries during my career.