Nathan Mueller's Employer, Reliastar Fraud

In this essay, the author

• Explains that nathan mueller's employer, reliastar, was acquired by the large insurance company ing in 2000. mueller learned all aspects of the erp system including financial reporting, journal entries, and checks and wire payment processing.
• Explains that mueller worked in the accounting department of his division, where he was one of three employees that could request checks. he could log-in as another employee and request a check, while approving it using his own account.
• Describes how mueller wrote a check on behalf of his company to pay off $88,000 of credit card debt. the checks went undetected because one of ing’s customers had “universal” as part of its name.

• Explains that nathan mueller's employer, reliastar, was acquired by the large insurance company ing in 2000. mueller learned all aspects of the erp system including financial reporting, journal entries, and checks and wire payment processing.
• Explains that mueller worked in the accounting department of his division, where he was one of three employees that could request checks. he could log-in as another employee and request a check, while approving it using his own account.
• Describes how mueller wrote a check on behalf of his company to pay off $88,000 of credit card debt. the checks went undetected because one of ing’s customers had “universal” as part of its name.
• Explains how mueller created a dummy company so he could use the stolen money for his own purposes. the fraud was concealed by hiding the debits in an expense-type ledger account with lots of reconciliation activity.
• Explains that mueller needed an explanation for the money he used to buy luxury cars, trips, and watches. employees at work noticed his lavish lifestyle, but did not raise suspicions.
• Explains that mueller rationalized his behavior because his income was not enough to pay all his and his pregnant wife’s bills. financial pressure and lack of internal controls and segregation of duties presented mueller a huge opportunity to embezzle.
• Explains that mueller was not caught until a coworker became suspicious from talking with mueller's ex-wife about his "gambling winnings."
• Narrates how the coworker who caught mueller's fraud ran a query running all the checks she supposedly approved. the query red-flagged ten "ace" checks totally $1 million that she did not request.
• Opines that ing top management should be aware that mueller knows all the inner workings of his division’s erp system and that the opportunity for fraud is stronger. segregating the operational duties from the recordkeeping responsibilities would have prevented this fraud.
• Opines that mueller did not make up dummy names in the system and hid the change in debits to a reconciliation account.
• Opines that a strong tone at the top for fraud prevention could have eliminated or stifled the opportunity mueller had for embezzlement.