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Reporting and Investigating Improper Governmental Activities Scenario Case #1 Exercise: Prior to the merger, the department of Digital Arts was a relatively small organization with multiple functions associated with many of the staff positions. The former MSO, Paul Beach, had delegated purchasing and financial management responsibility to Brian Chapman for all activities associated with the Digital Arts Laboratory. Thus Brian had wide responsibility for approving, ordering and paying for all products and services in support of the Laboratory. During his chairmanship of the Department of Digital Arts, Dr. Smyth, used to say laughingly that he and the MSO always “left the boring purchasing stuff to Brian.” After the staff meeting and shortly after the merger, Connie Truitt, a long-time and trusted employee comes to see you. Connie had hoped that the merger would result in a reclassification for her position and was disappointed that she was not assigned new and higher level responsibilities. However, she has been assigned responsibility for all business activities associated with the Digital Lab and works closely with Brian Chapman. You recently learned of several instances of angry outbursts between Brian and Connie but were advised by both their supervisors that they were working on resolving this issue with both employees. In an agitated state, Connie tells you that while performing routine maintenance on Digital Art’s historical files, she made a disturbing discovery: Over the past three years, Brian had approved a total of four contracts with three different vendors for software consulting services for a total amount of $86,000. Brian entered the invoices and paid them. However, Connie couldn’t find final reports in the files, nor any other evidence that the consultants had completed their contracts satisfactorily. When she asked Brian, he said his files were a mess and that the documentation must be “in a box somewhere, maybe at home.” According to Connie, he seemed annoyed with her questions and told her that she should not concern herself with these old contracts. When Brian went to lunch that day, Connie went back to the files and noticed that all three vendors had P.O. boxes instead of street addresses and that two of the vendors had the same telephone number. She made copies of these files and shows them to you. She tells you she hopes you can “nail the guy,” but she’s afraid he’ll “come after her” if he discovers that she has tipped you off. Case #2 Exercise: As Chief Administrative Officer, you impress upon your staff the need to have an organization with the appropriate controls to assure proper business activities and prevent opportunities for fraud, waste, and abuse. You encourage your staff to come forward if they see irregularities. Connie Truitt, your Contracts and Grants Analyst, tells you an expense voucher just came to her for her review prior to the Chair’s approval. The expense report was prepared for Dr. Piacere, who was recently recruited by the Department of Digital Arts to fill an endowed professorship position and to serve as the Principal Investigator in leading a major research team with international collaborations. The nature of the research requires members of the team to travel both domestically and internationally. Prior to her recruitment at UC, Professor Piacere served as a Vice President in a large and profitable firm in private industry and was accustomed to making her own travel arrangements with minimal restrictions from the company. The department’s policy is to have the principal investigator (Piacere) authorize travel in advance for the other members of the research team. Upon their return they submit travel claims to the department’s Administrative Assistant who prepares travel vouchers using the campus’s new automated finance system. The travel claims are routed electronically to the Principal Investigator for approval. The Department Chair must authorize and approve the principal investigators’ travel. The campus participates in the University’s new corporate credit card program where the cards are to be used only for official travel, and the credit card company is paid directly by the University. The principal investigator and some of the researchers have corporate credit cards. Dr. Piacere was invited to attend, as a keynote speaker, an international symposium on networked computing systems to be held in London from May 18-21. The Institute of Computer Networking paid for lodging and meals associated with the conference, and provided Dr. Piacere with an honorarium. Since this would be Dr. Piacere’s first trip to England, she decided to combine business with vacation by taking along her husband and son. The entire trip was expected to take about three weeks, from May 16 through June 6. As Dr. Piacere was going to be away for so long, she shared her password with the administrative assistant to enable timely processing of travel claims for her research team members in her absence. Rather than book an economy round trip by air to London, Dr. Piacere decided to take advantage of a limited time fly over/cruise back package, which was twice the cost of the economy airfare. Her request for a $2,500 cash advance to purchase her ticket was approved by the Chair. After obtaining the advance, Dr. Piacere charged transportation costs of $7,500 for herself and her family on her corporate credit card. Connie has indicated that she is uncomfortable about bringing this to your attention. She is concerned about the fallout that may occur if Dr. Piacere is angered by her action.
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