Not only has business travel ground to a halt, but as a result employee expense reimbursements have too. While some work from home employees may be buying printer ink and envelopes, Google has made clear employees cannot expense meals taken at home (well, duh).
In normal times expense reimbursements are one of the primary areas of fraud that companies face. Employees fake receipts. They change amounts on receipts. They mis-describe personal purchases as being for business and submit those. They submit the same item more than once. Employees know which supervisors don’t look closely, and learn which companies don’t use sophisticated software to catch these tricks.
A couple of months ago it was a viral story when an Instagram influencer faked a trip to Bali by taking photos inside of an Ikea.
Well an intellectual property law firm partner faked his trips, too. The man is accused of “submitting nearly 400 false expense claims, demanding more than $360,000 from the firm for bogus trips across a broad swath of North America.”
The partner’s best friend was the airline 24 hour penalty-free cancellation rule, it seems – he would make airline reservations, cancel them, but submit the original receipts for reimbursement anyway. Trips that he faked “read like a Johnny Cash song.”
The complaint says Wettermann faked travel to Brookfield, Oshkosh, Milwaukee, Madison, Appleton and Green Bay, Wisconsin; Wauconda, Rockford, Cary, Crystal Lake and Vernon Hills, Illinois; Indianapolis, South Bend, West Lafayette and Fort Wayne, Indiana; Austin, Dallas and Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose and Orange County, California; Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; Phoenix; Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Florida; Atlanta; Newark, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; Boston; St. Louis; Binghamton and New York City; Philadelphia; Arlington, Virginia; Toronto, Ontario; and Vancouver, British Columbia.
He got caught in phases, and his firm just asked him for the money back each time. It seems his aggressiveness really increased over time, with the firm initially finding $1171.67 for 3 trips of faked expenses in 2015; $37,600.19 for 68 trips of faked expenses in 2016; $66,448.88 for 116 trips of faked expenses in 2017; and $82,836.95 for 104 trips of faked expenses in 2018. He started off 2019 on a roll accruing $91,807.46 for 91 trips worth of faked expenses.
The law firm asked for $279,865.15 back – but then they found an additional $81,771.32 in expenses from trips that couldn’t be substantiated. And where the lawyer really got himself in trouble wasn’t so much just the fraud against his firm, which was willing to absorb the loss especially when it was being paid back, but because despite the miscreants best efforts to avoid this several trips did get billed to clients.
He was fired in December and now faces professional disciplinary proceedings.
At my last job, I had a colleague who had no scruples and a manager who had no backbone. My colleague, when traveling for “work”, tacked on entire weekends to many of his hotel stays. This imbecile barely did any work during a 9-5 weekday and he sure as hell did not even pretend to work weekends, evidenced by his Instagram photos from venues of entertainment all over town. And my cuckold of a manager approved that nonsense in Concur every damn time.
I tried calling this out one time and was admonished for being disrespectful to my colleague. That was my very last day of employment at that company. By my own choice. Yes, that same afternoon I turned in my company laptop to IT and bid the receptionist in the lobby goodbye for the last time. I already had another job offer in hand, so I simply accepted that one. I’ve been working in the new company for quite some time now!
“He’s Been Everywhere, Man” was the best headline for this linked story. And kudos to you for including the reference.
One good thing that may come out of the current situation is companies looking at the cost and quantity of OPM travel with more scrutiny, and cutting down, which will bring airfare/hotel prices down for all of us!
@Bob or they will cut service and raise prices
Gary you are really hitting the scared cows between the eyes with the air-driven bolt gun. First the Hawaiian separatist racists, now the business-flying scumbaggery. Kudos. No way to know for sure, however, from 15 years of corporate life where I saw this crap day in and day out, it’s endemic behavior, I have no doubt.
As someone who respects the locations we frequently visit and have always paid our own way from money we have *earned* and enjoying status we have *earned*, I am enjoying seeing the feces getting surfaced and the toilet getting flushed. Keep it up, and in fact, dig deeper and shine more light.
Worked for a company years ago that had a $80/day food/beverage per diem. Colleague would stay in $250/nt full service hotels and end up out of pocket almost everyday by having room service breakfast, nice lunch somewhere, dinner in hotel restaurant. I’d stay in a $99 Hampton Inn, eat the free breakfast, have a $6 lunch, $6 dinner, and $72 bar tab. I was the one that was reprimanded for frivolous use of funds. ♂️
@Frank, I had the same. I was working for a company in Italy and had a week long business trip to Toronto. When I got back to Italy and submitted my expense claim the VP of Finance called me into his office and asked me about my dinner bills. I asked what the problem was and he said “You had a pint of beer and chicken wings…five nights in a row, why?” I said because I like chicken wings (which were hard to find where I lived in Italy). Besides, the cost was only about $15 for dinner, which should have made him happy. He laughed and agreed that my expenses were ridiculously low, but that I should try to vary my dinner selection LOL