Accounting 562 Creative Paper Assignments
“Southwest New Energy LLC Inflated Billing Scheme”
Fraud Plot: Inflated Billing Scheme
Victim Company Name: Southwest New Energy LLC
Fraud Company Name: Construction and Safety Supply Company
Characters:
Southwest New Energy LLC:
Forensic Accountant ------------------- Dane Striker
CFO --------------------------------------Tony Chen
Controller ------------------------------George Smith
AP Accountant ------------------------Mary Perez
Procurement Manager --------------- David Vincent
Buyer -----------------------------------Kyle Miles
Warehouse Worker ------------------ Paul Lopez
Material Manager----------------------Brad Allen
Construction and Safety Supply Company:
Owner / CEO -------------------------- Ben Harrison

Introduction:
Southwest New Energy LLC is a start-up company located in the Sunshine City, Arizona. It’s parent company, HB Solar Energy Co., it’s a leading new energy company in China. HB Solar Energy Co. also owns multiple solar panels manufactories in China and has been selling their high capacity solar panels to countries all around the world. SNW was incorporated in United States in earlier 2013. This movement was a side-result of a Power Supply Agreement that signed between the American city and the Chinese energy company. To secure the development agreement, Sunshine City required HB Solar Energy Co. to establish an American registered company to oversee the construction of a 25 acres solar firm at the south side of the city, and managing their solar energy products.

15 month after the launched of Southwest New Energy LLC, the company finally moved into its self-constructed 2-story headquarter building and over 60 people are working in the HQ office now. SNW has been dealing with tremendous growth and has a huge solar firm is undergoing a construction phases, it indeed needs to increase its manpower. Among all of the departments, one of the departments that really need some extra help is the Finance/Accounting Department. Under the leadership of the company’s CFO, Mr. Tony Chen, the department has been successfully manage and secure the organization’s financial situation, but as the business grows rapidly and its business models are getting more complicated, the 3- persons department needs to expand. Currently, Mr. Chen as the CFO and is overseeing the whole company’s finance situation and finance planning, he’s a very busy man and travels oversee a lot; Mr. George Smith came on board about 10 months ago and he’s the Controller of the company, George in charge of monitoring all accounting fairs; and Ms. Mary Perez is the AP accountant and she has over 20 years of experience on Accounts Payable. Mary is a short, nice lady and takes care of a lot of burdens for the department as well. As the business grows and in order to meet their daily goals, everyone in the accounting department is working on more than just one aspect of duties right now, overloaded work flow and segregation of duties had become a major concern for George these days, he knows that he needs to make some changes and bring someone good into the department quickly.

Lucky to them, very soon a staffing agency has contacted George and referred Mr. Dane Striker to the company. Dane was a senior accountant for a famous Atlanta construction company and just moved to Arizona couple weeks ago. Dane has been working in the accounting field for over 8 years now. After graduated from a Texas University with a master degree in Accounting, Dane successfully passed his CPA license exams right after his graduation. Dane worked for private corporations and public accounting firms as well before he got hired by SNE. He has always been the “number” guy and has good eyes on catching “issues”. But out of all of his strengths and skills, he himself is so proud of his forensic accounting skills. In his past, Dane had helped one of his employer to discover a “Account-receivable’ theft and retrieved over