Jerry Luck Case Summary

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Case Study Analysis Option #1

Jerry Luck has been placed in charge of a branch of credit union. Included in his duties are accounting tasks of which he and his management team have little experience. Additionally, Mr. Luck’s salary and bonus are linked to the annual profits of the branch of which he is in charge. Most of Mr. Luck’s management team are blood relations or connected by their religious beliefs and practices. Due to new competition and stagnated congregation growth, Mr. Luck’s branch is not on target to reach its expected annual increase of 3% which will adversely affect salaries and bonuses. Though no fraud has currently occurred, the conditions exist for the management team to engage in fraudulent activities.

Risk of Fraud and the Fraud Triangle

Fraud as defined by American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) is the intentional act that causes a misstatement of financial statements which are subject to audit (Maddox, 2004). Based upon this definition and the current conditions, Mr. Luck’s …show more content…

When applying the fraud triangle to Mr. Luck’s branch of credit union, it is clear that all three conditions are present. The first condition being pressure has been initiated by the managing parties of the credit union corporate office. They have linked, as a large part of Mr. Luck’s salary and bonus, the overall corporate growth goal of 3%. Linking salary to corporate growth goals violates internal controls as it provides the incentive to manipulate financial statements to meet the pressure of such goals and increasing Mr. Luck’s salary in the process (Balsam, Jiang & Lu, 2014). This also leads to rationalization on the part of Mr. Luck as he must meet the goal set forth by the corporate

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