Story: Catching Embezzlement

So this is going to be a little bit of a downer, but still a good and important story. This all started when I took over my fraternity. The first semester started, and I was tasked with just running the fraternity. I was figuring stuff out and did not have much time for anything aside from school and running the books. As the semester came to a close, I felt like I had figured some of the main points out and was getting set up for my second semester. Then the unthinkable happened, our house was robbed. We were having some work done on the place, and somehow word leaked out that no one was there over the summer. All of a sudden, I was halfway through my first term and had to deal with the police, insurance, our alumni, and all of the brothers who lost stuff. So I was going through some of our bank statements trying to find the purchases of some of our speakers and stuff to send to the insurance to hopefully either get new speakers or simply the money back.

While doing this, I stumbled across a ton of "interesting" charges. There were a ton of fast food charges, such as Starbucks, Taco Bell, etc., as well as some cash withdrawals and even some charges at gas stations. Seeing these, I had no idea what to do or even think. I did not have a great relationship with the previous treasurer and simply did not know him that well, but even with that, I figured that this would be impossible to happen to us. So I talked with my exec board to see if they had any advice on how to handle this, and all of them were just as shocked as I was. So I reached out. I talked to both the previous treasurer and the past two presidents since the charges went back over the last treasurer's two terms.

The last treasurer demanded that he was innocent. He assured me that he did not use the card in such a way and never allowed the exec boards he served with to use it either. Now, it is important to note that there are virtually no records from this time. No spreadsheets, no budgets, nothing, so his story was only contradicted by the actual charges to the bank account. So that was when I reached out and talked to the two presidents that this treasurer worked with to see if they happened to know about any of the happenings. They also claimed to know nothing. I probably should have stopped and let it go, but I kept digging. I eventually came across one of the old exec members that told me what actually had happened.

In the two terms of the previous treasurer, the debit card was passed around and used for personal things. It was used just on a whim and with almost no oversight. I was furious. Not only had these men stolen from the brotherhood, but they had also point-blank lied to my face about it. However, I faced a major issue. All of the exec members had graduated the semester before I found all of the embezzlement. So I tried to bring up to the brotherhood what to do, and against my pleas, they voted to let it slide and not go after the perpetrators. I was not done yet. I effectively made it impossible for those guys to show their faces again without everyone knowing exactly who they were. I also added new bylaws and positions to hopefully prevent this in the future. In the end, no group is immune, and it is important to make sure you check behind the last person.