A finance director pled guilty to embezzling $10,752,535 from an Arizona business. He was sentenced to 78 months in prison.
Mark Latham began his role as finance director at the unnamed company in 2009. He began his embezzlement scheme shortly thereafter, continuing until he was caught in 2025.
Latham's scheme included paying his personal credit cards using the organization's funds, giving himself unauthorized bonuses, paying a relative's rent with the organization's funds, and transferring money to his personal bank account.
Some of his more lavish purchases included $39,000 Super Bowl tickets, $23,731 worth of Taylor Swift tickets, a $46,248 room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Costa Rica, $38,827 for NFL season tickets for 2022-2024, and a $28,098 golf simulator.
To conceal his theft, Latham edited bank statements to remove evidence of payments to himself.
Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-az/pr/scottsdale-man-sentenced-more-six-years-prison-embezzling-over-10-million-employer
Commentary
In the above matter, the guilty party was the finance director and his fraud extended for 16 years unchecked which, not surprisingly, led to more than $10M in losses. We do not know how his scheme was discovered other than he edited bank statements which he provided to other executives likely as part of his duties. One could presume that the discovery of original bank statements led to the uncovering or, at least, the verification of his crime.
When a financial executive has complete control over financial documentation, including source, content, format, and delivery, falsified documentation can go undetected for years, as the above matter illustrates.
The first prevention step is that organizations should ensure others, including executive leadership, have financial oversight including access to original financial records and/or copies directly from the source. It is also important that third-party sources audit the financial records including the original documents from the banking, financial, or credit source.
Other steps to consider are:
· Grant read-only access to financial documents to at least one person outside the finance department;
· Require monthly bank statements to be downloaded directly from the online banking portal by persons outside the finance department;
· Periodically compare finance bank statements with the general ledger on a regular schedule from leadership and/or third parties; and/or
· Preserve all original financial documents for review and auditing.
The final takeaway is that organizations that accept financial documentation without verified original source documents are at a high risk of fraud.
