A Colorado city is looking to tighten internal controls after embezzlement by a high-level official rocked the city council.
Julie Brown, the former finance director of Durango, Co., is suspected of stealing $700,000 over the course of 17 years. The scale and the length of the theft has left city officials wondering how to better keep track of and protect tax payer funds.
Doug Cash, a fraud examiner, spoke to the city council about options to strengthen internal controls, including a forensic audit. “If someone really wants to steal from you, they’re going to steal from you,” Cash said, according to an article by the Durango Herald. “What you’re hoping your internal controls do is identify that quickly so it doesn’t go on for very long,” he said.
A forensic audit may be expensive for the city, costing up to $25,000, but will also provide assurance that nothing else has been missed. Auditors would examine document manipulation such as irregular numbers and repeated issues in billing. Even minute details such as irregular fonts and the use of PDFs to view original documents can be of note to an investigator. The audit time and scope is flexible, as it can easily be extended to the entirety of the city.
Another option the council considered was an internal control examination, which would not go into as much depth as a forensic audit, but can look at multiple departments and examine current policies and procedures. The investigation would have a fixed cost and a fixed time frame.
The city has been shaken by the fraud and is looking to ensure that a similar event does not occur again. 
Stephanie Liu is assistant editor at Internal Audit 360°