Making It Legal:

The Associated Press reported yesterday that there was little sign (from its analysis) that former New York state Gov. Elliot Spitzer used taxpayer money or campaign funds to subsidize his visits with prostitutes. His state-issued credit card also showed no outward sign of having been abused for extracurricular pursuits.

I can’t say whether he used public funds or not, and federal investigators have yet to comment. But it started me on a stream-of-consciousness series of questions in a business context: How easy would it be to disguise (bury) those kinds of transactions? What if Spitzer were my employee? What kinds of safeguards would I want to have in place? Here’s what I came up with:

• Make sure that the person in your company writing the checks is not the person reconciling the statements (unless you, the business owner, are holding both positions).
• Restict the number of people who have company bank cards or company credit cards.
• Ask for receipts from employees for all business-related purchases.
• Always review bank statements (once reconciled) and financial statements–don’t abdicate that responsibility, even if you delegate the minutiae of it
• Hire outside advisors (such as accountants) who can direct a practiced (and objective) eye over your company’s financial condition.

I don’t remember who said, “never believe anything you see in print,” but the same can easily apply to e-mail. Perhaps even more so. So often we get bombarded by e-mail messages, offers for products and cries for help that we may accept as true without doing even a molecule of due diligence and checking around to ensure that:
1. The source who sent it to us is legitimate, and
2. the offer/request is valid.

Here, from Virtual Hosting Blog, is a list of “Top 20 Hilarious and Creative Internet Scams.” I’m not sure I’d call them “hilarious,” and it’s a shame that creativity has been used in such a warped way. I also wonder–why aren’t the plaintive emails from the high-ranking Nigerian officials seeking a place to park procurement contract funds on the list?