Here we are, back for another week. Yippee. Comments are off on the Monday news brief by default but you are welcome to hit us up via email or text if you have something to say. Now, here’s some stuff that’s going on.
In Milwaukee, a Catholic charity is suing a former employee as well as Baker Tilly, the latter because they didn’t notice almost $2 was missing:
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee is suing its former finance director, alleging she funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into her own pocket. It’s also suing the auditing firm Baker Tilly, saying auditors missed signs of fraud.
In December, the social services agency said it fired two employees and identified two other former employees believed to be involved in a years-long scheme to steal at least $1.7 million.
Catholic Charities named former finance director, Brandi Ellis of Milwaukee, and Baker Tilly as defendants in its lawsuit filed May 9.
The nonprofit runs several programs, including adoption services, adult day services, counseling, case management, and refugee and immigration support.
Shout out to my colleague for Slacking this over.
University of Tulsa shares a bit of wisdom for students picking a major from a business school graduate whose mom was an accountant and who initially didn’t want to spend her working life surrounded by number crunchers (who does??):
But then a UTulsa professor gave her some advice.
“They said that when picking your major and your career, you should stick close to the people you like being around,” Hannah Bostian recalled. “You will spend about 90,000 hours of your life in your career, and the No. 1 thing that makes it enjoyable is being around people you like. When selecting your major, you should like the professors that teach it and the students who take it. At the time, I was an engineering student taking some business electives, and I quickly realized that I had made friends in the business classes. I decided to follow my friends.”
Across the pond, the big firms are talking to their audit regulator about the wrench US tariffs are throwing into their duties, reports The Times:
Accountants are lobbying the Financial Reporting Council, the sector’s regulator, to provide more guidance and rules for auditing companies whose operations are significantly affected by the US president’s trade war.
Some of those lobbying for greater guidance include members of the big four — KPMG, EY, Deloitte and PwC — it is understood.
They are telling the regulator that the current uncertainty around tariffs makes forecasting future profits more difficult. Forecasting trading is important because it determines whether accounts can be signed off as showing a business is a going concern. This means that the company is expected to continue to operate for at least the next 12 months.
Young lawyers at PwC will riot if you take away their AI, said a partner who also happens to be chief AI officer:
When consulting firm PwC—which employs thousands of lawyers to provide clients with legal services—provided an AI tool called Harvey to staff, it expected an enthusiastic response from senior lawyers. But in particular it was the junior staff who were “really excited about it,” said Bivek Sharma, partner and chief AI officer at PwC UK, at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI event in London on Tuesday.
“They don’t want to sit there going through legislation manually trying to piece things together… They can have a tool to kind of get them 60% to 70% of the way there, then they can do more qualitative work,” he said.
Harvey uses large language models to help legal teams analyze contracts, draft documents, and streamline research. It’s been so well received at PwC, Sharma said, that “if we took Harvey away from our staff, there’d be a riot.”
Harvey was announced two years ago.
A guy who swatted the IRS while drunk to get back at the girlfriend trying to break up with him has been sentenced:
A Kansas City man was sentenced in federal court for placing a hoax 911 call that resulted in the detention of an Internal Revenue Service employee and a building lockdown on Pershing Road.
Anthony M. Alford, 46, received a sentence of three years in federal prison without parole from District Court Judge Stephen R. Bough. Alford was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release after completing his prison term.
Court records state that on Sept. 10, 2024, Alford called 911 in Kansas City and falsely claimed that a person identified as “Victim One” was armed with a firearm and threatening to carry out a shooting at the IRS Building located at 333 West Pershing Road. Victim One was employed by the IRS.
Alford and ‘Victim One’ had dated for about a month and she was trying to end things.
Here’s something you probably hadn’t thought about when it was announced last week we’re getting our first American pope: Does Leo XIV have to pay taxes?
The United States generally requires all citizens to file an annual tax return, even those who live out of the country. But assuming he doesn’t renounce his U.S. citizenship, Leo — born in the Chicago area and known until this week as Robert Prevost — has special tax considerations, both as a clergyman and now as the head of a foreign government.
WaPo does a pretty deep dive on the possibilities. Popes don’t earn a salary but they do “earn” room and board. TLDR:
[Jared Walczak, a vice president of the Tax Foundation] said that he doesn’t expect Leo to end up paying U.S. taxes but that it’s possible the IRS will issue a private letter specifically addressing his situation. Or Congress might even pass a law spelling out the tax situation of the first American pope, Walczak speculated.
An 81-year-old former IRS agent has been sentenced to state prison after she scammed a longtime client with bogus investment schemes:
According to the Sonoma County District Attorney Carla Rodriguez’s office, 81-year-old Elana Cohen-Roth of Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles County was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Friday. Last month, a jury convicted Cohen-Roth of 23 felony counts of financial fraud in relation to the scheme, which victimized a Sonoma County woman.
Prosecutors said Cohen-Roth began defrauding the victim in 2013, when she began preparing the victim’s taxes. The victim was 66-years-old at the time.
“They quickly became good friends. From their personal and professional relationship, Cohen-Roth gained access to all the victim’s financial information,” according to the DA’s office.
In Connecticut, an accountant decided to do a little COVID relief fraud:
A Woodbridge man last week pleaded guilty to offenses connected to a scheme to defraud a COVID-19 pandemic relief program of more than $2.3 million, according to the office of Acting United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut Marc Silverman.
Yasir Hamed, 60, waived his right to be indicted on May 9 in front of a judge in Bridgeport. He pleaded guilty to bank fraud and engaging in illegal monetary transactions.
From June 2020 to September 2021, he’s accused of submitting false PPP loan applications on behalf of the companies, overstating employee numbers and average monthly payroll, and making other fraudulent representations.
Throughout the scheme, Silverman’s office says Hamed gained $2.3 million in PPP loans for his businesses and his clients.
On the topic of fraud and scamming, KPMG Switzerland has profiled the corporate fraudster in their Enemy Within paper:
If a typical fraudster profile existed, it would be that of a male between 36 and 55 years of age who has been with a company for more than six years. The perpetrators do not display any suspicious behaviors such as having a grievance against the company or signs that they might be struggling in their personal or professional lives. They are considered friendly and extroverted and are generally perceived as being persons of respect – yet behind this façade often lies a strong sense of superiority.
This part isn’t surprising:
Internal controls were insufficient in 76 percent of the fraud cases in the study. Fifty-one percent of the affected organizations did not have adequate preventive measures in place when the fraud was committed, while the rest indicated that they used codes of conduct (81%), internal audits (64%) and whistleblowing (60%) as control mechanisms.
PwC Australia is mired in some fresh drama:
The former head of the NSW Education Department’s school building unit awarded contracts worth millions of dollars to PwC, granting work to a partner at the consulting firm who had suggested him for the top job and helped review his CV before he applied for the role, an anti-corruption probe has heard.
The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption is holding a public inquiry into the conduct of Anthony Manning, who headed up School Infrastructure NSW from 2017 until last year.