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Levon Helm was a kind of one-man mortgage broker. He would drive around Tennessee looking for homes that had second mortgages, and if the criteria were favorable, he would offer to buy the second mortgage for “cash on the barrelhead.” Helm bought low and sold high, making sizable profits. Being a small operation, he employed one person, Cindy Patterson, who did all his bookkeeping. Patterson was an old family friend, and he trusted her so implicitly that he never checked up on the ledgers or the bank reconciliations. At some point, Patterson started “borrowing” from the business and concealing her transactions by booking phony expenses. She intended to pay it back someday, but she got used to the extra cash and couldn’t stop. By the time the scam was discovered, she had drained the company of funds that it owed to many of its creditors. The company went bankrupt, Patterson did some jail time, and Helm lost everything.
Requirements
1. What was the key control weakness in this case?
2. Many small businesses cannot afford to hire enough people for adequate separation of duties. What can they do to compensate for this?
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Chapter 7 Solutions
Horngren's Financial & Managerial Accounting, The Managerial Chapters, Student Value Edition (6th Edition)
- Blossom Company applies manufacturing overhead to jobs on the basis of machine hours used. Overhead costs are estimated to total $293,250 for the year, and machine usage is estimated at 127,500 hours. For the year, $328,440 of overhead costs are incurred, and 132,600 hours are used. Manufacturing overhead rate $ Manufacturing Overhead $ -23,460 2.3 per machine hour Underapplied Prepare the adjusting entry to assign the under- or overapplied overhead for the year to cost of goods sold. (List all debit entries before credit entries. Credit account titles are automatically indented when amount is entered. Do not indent manually.) Account Titles and Explanation Debit Creditarrow_forward1. Country Income Tax Acts Section # List of Items in emoluments Trinidad and Tobago Barbados Guyana St. Vincent and the Grenadines Antigua and Barbuda St. Lucia St. Kitts and Nevis Bermuda Anguilla Jamaica Aruba Martinique For the countries listed in the table above, search the respective Income Tax Acts and identify the sections that deal with emoluments. List the items that should be included in the emoluments as determined by the respective Acts. 2. Peter Small is an Accountant at Jumbo Products Ltd. (Jumbo). He receives an annual salary of $1,080,000. Although Peter does not require a cellular phone to effectively perform his duties, his employer provides him with one and agrees to pay a maximum bill of $30,000 per year. For the year, Peter’s cellular phone bill totals $38,100. He receives $4,500 per month for entertainment.…arrow_forwardKindly help me with this question general Accounting questionarrow_forward
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