I chose this article because it is a great example of how a lack of controls can get overlooked when an organization thinks “nothing is wrong.” Here is a guy who is the associate athletic director at the University of Toledo, and had virtually no oversight to his operation because no one ever bothered to look into it (a lot of trust, no verification). The article details that this opportunity was exploited for a loss of approximately $12,000.00 – which doesn’t seem like much compared to most cases – however, that was all the Internal Audits team could account for thus far.
Apparently, the processes in the finance operation were so diluted that the associated AD, Anthony Zaworski, was the sole owner of athletics spending, receiving, expensing, depositing and reconciling. In this day in age, there wasn’t a trace of segregation of duties in UT’s athletics finance department. The article revealed that most of the day-to-day cash-handling / expensing was done out of a desk drawer in Zaworski’s office, and there we deposits that came 3-6 months after events happened, or – my personal favorite – before events took place. Best of all, his superiors were giving him high marks on his performance evaluations all the while this is going on. I know it doesn’t fit in to this week’s class, but I read this and couldn’t believe it – so I wanted to share it with the class.
It seems like these days, especially universities, have no controls whatsoever within their Athletic Departments. Whether it is spending, or making sure the athletes are still students, attend their own classes, (it has been reported that universities look the other way to students taking classes for athletes) there is a lack of controls across the board. I believe, and I know this is not related to the class as well, but controls can be augmented not just for data and businesses, but also disciplinary and operational purposes for people.