State audit leads to fraud firing

A statewide investigation of procurement card purchases caught $25,000 in fraudulent spending on personal expenses by a Tech employee, and the Institute has launched its own investigation to determine why its oversight methods on card usage failed to stop it.

Tech's procurement cards are Visa cards issued by Bank of America that can be used for authorized Institute purchases. They were introduced about a decade ago to simplify the purchasing process.

Details of all transactions made with the card are uploaded by the bank to an online distribution system where coordinators from each department may monitor purchases by their employees. The Department of Internal Audits created the position of Procurement Card Compliance Officer to review cardholder activity.

The identity of the woman and her position have not been identified, nor have details about the type and extent of the spending been released by the Institute as it performs the investigation.

The state investigators notified Tech of the fraudulent spending in April. This led to the employee being fired May 4.

This is not the first time an employee has run up inappropriate charges on a procurement card.

"According to our Department of Internal Auditing, [there have been] situations where employees have willfully or inadvertently violated the card guidelines," said Lisa Ray Grovenstein, director of public relations at Institute Communications and Public Affairs. She could not compare this incident to those in terms of the extent of the spending.

"The whole reason there is an investigation going on for this incident is that they need to determine why this happened and what needs to be done to prevent it from happening again," Grovenstein said.

Before being issued procurement cards employees must take an online training course and sign an agreement which states, among other things, that improper purchases will be deducted from the employee's wages and that fraudulent spending may result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination.