Another case of embezzlement in a small company. Accounting manager of Schmitt, Inc an air conditioning and electric company in Dade City, Florida, was charged with embezzling half a million dollars from the company.
Michael Cougill, the manager, forged and cashed fraudulent checks. He forged checks to pay personal bills for loans, home repairs, etc. Cougill bought cruise line tickets, paid for hotel room for himself and his family using the company’s credit line with Synovus bank. Cougill failed to make cash deposits at Synovus Bank during times he was given tens of thousands of dollars in cash to deposit into the company’s checking account. And it doesn’t stop here; he applied for a Chase credit card in Schmitt’s name and used that also to make thousands of dollars in purchases.
Over the period of around 2 years, October 2010 and July 2012, Cougill embezzled approximately $535,000 from the company.
This is another situation of lack of segregation of duty as well as lack of supervision and internal controls. Smaller companies seem to be getting hit by this issue more and more.
