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Article: Fraud fight in the Wild West: how a forensic audit discovered millions of dollars in fraud and brought a corrupt contractor and school district employee to justice.(focus on FRAUD PREVENTION)(Fort Worth Independent School District)(Brooks Contractors, Inc.)
- Article from:
- Security Management
- Article date:
- November 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 American Society for Industrial Security. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In old Hollywood westerns, it's easy to tell the bad guys from the good guys: Bad guys wear black, good guys wear white. When it came to uncovering modern-day fraud in the city known as the place "where the West begins," however, investigators found out that identifying scoundrels is not that easy. The case involved contractor fraud on a large scale at the Fort Worth Independent School District (FWISD), which comprises 143 schools that collectively serve more than 80,000 students. The scheme went on for more than seven years, and it cost the school district nearly $16 million.
THE DISTRICT FIRST BEGAN to suspect that there was a problem in 2001, when the school ...