An internal audit of the Lancaster County Drug Task Force in Pennsylvania revealed that as much as $150,000 was missing from the drug task force headquarters.
The funds, first found missing in April, were originally seized from less than a dozen drug arrests between 2017 and 2019.
As the funds were reportedly kept in a secure location with limited access, District Attorney Heather Adams said in a press conference that the theft was likely conducted by insiders. During the press conference, Adams also said that she found “lax procedures and apparent misappropriation.”
The task force is making several changes to procedures based on the findings of the audit, including how it handles seized money, how evidence and seized money is stored, who has access to those items, and annual audits. Adams hopes the changes will help the Task Force in “moving forward and strengthening the unit in every regard.”
Better Audits
Adams also pointed out some flaws in the existing annual audit. “The audit that is performed yearly by the controller’s office is not a true audit in the accounting sense of the term,” she said. The audit only requires the office to list assets based on the records provided by the district attorney’s office. Adams said that such an audit does not provide an appropriate system of checks and balances. “There’s no way the controller’s office could have discovered this discrepancy,” she added.
Adams announced that monthly checks on funds held by detectives for investigative purposes will be conducted, as well as a yearly internal audit of the Task Force funds conducted by the Lancaster County detectives. She also announced the overhaul of accounting systems and money access controls, switching to storing most seized funds in banks with electronic handling, and additional audits for the storage area where cash is held.
As an ongoing part of the investigation, Adams is continuing the audit process by enlisting a forensic auditing firm to review outgoing expenditures from the forfeiture account to “ensure proper controls and accounting procedures are in place,” she said. 
Stephanie Liu is assistant editor at Internal Audit 360°