School Audit

[South Street]

What do Roslyn,William Floyd and Center Moriches schools have in common? The Auditor and financial problems. Who's next?

[who next]

who next for it

Add Three Village to the list. They used the same firm. And their last superintendent took over $40,000. Here's the outrageous part: he took a plea-bargain, is repaying the money and has to perform 840 hours of community service. There is virtually no punishment for his crime! When it comes to white collar theft, the lesson is crime pays.

You have to ask Martha Stewart about that one. She lost the money AND went to jail. But, you're right in general. The nerve these people had!

[doresearch]

Roslyn had/has administrators from all those places. Does anyone know if Island Trees and Herricks are on that list?

[al hwho]

who next

[Gadfly05]

What do Roslyn,William Floyd and Center Moriches schools have in common? The Auditor and financial problems. Who's next?

PLEASE READ A COMPLETE LIST OF THE WHO'S,,WHO!

FYI Boys & Girls What do you think is happening


Entities Audited By Miller, Lilly & Pearce
School Districts (53 Total in 2003-04)
Amagansett
Bayport-Blue Point
Bethpage
Bridgehampton
Brookhaven-Comsewogue
Center Moriches
Chappaqua (Westchester County)
Deer Park
East Hampton
East Moriches
East Quogue
Elwood
Garden City
Glen Cove
Greenport
Hampton Bays
Hempstead
Herricks
Island Trees
Islip
Kiryas Joel (Orange County)
Levittown
Lindenhurst
Longwood
Manhasset
Massapequa
Mattituck-Cutchogue
Middle Country
Miller Place
Montauk
New Hyde Park
North Babylon
Oysterponds
Patchogue-Medford
Port Jefferson
Port Washington
Quogue
Riverhead
Sachem
Sag Harbor
Shelter Island
Shoreham-Wading River
South Country
South Orangetown (Rockland County)
Springs
Syosset
Tuckahoe Common
Valley Stream Thirteen
Valley Stream Union Free
West Hempstead
West Islip
Westhampton Beach
William Floyd

What about lynbr00k. The former supt. from Center Moriches is now there?

[See]

FYI.

Three Village is audited by another firm in PJ. Coughlin, Fondotos (spelling?), Cullen and Danowski. Not Miller, Lilly.

William Floyd had an independent auditor for MANY years. Miller, Lilly was brought in after the departure of Wright and found the discrepancies linked to his reign as well as the Cifonelli era.

Roslyn is the only district in which fraud has been found while Miller was on watch and that was allegedly due to a conspiracy of several parties. Should he have caught it? Probably, but that doesn't mean that fraud is an issue in ALL the district's audited by Miller.

Once you have a group of people covering up fraud, it's almost impossible to find it. The report seems to have some obvious signs that things were messed up in roslyn, but it's also easy to play monday morning quarterback.

I agree, auditors can not prevent fraud, and when you have very cunning people that are determined to steal, you will never prevent it when colusion is involved. The state did a great job of destroying a prominent audit firm, so what did that do? Watch your budgets now really close and see how much more you will be paying for auditors. Right now you have around 50 districts with no auditors, all scrambling to get bids from the few that are left. Out of the woodwork are coming audit firms that have never been in a school district - I wonder how fast they will be able to learn how things are run, and who is going to be able to get away with theft, now that there is no one watching this year!. Since the state hasn't had teams of auditors for years, they also will be hiring inexperienced kids out of school, that will take years to figure out the systems in all these districts. The real crooks are probably laughing! they will be retired before they get caught now. So guess what folks, not only are you going to be paying for the thefts, now you are going to be paying for the increased administrative expenses that are going to be necessary too.

I'm not saying that the crooks in RSD and WFD should get away with anything, but the fact that they got caught is a plus. I am afraid that what is going to happen now is that the "cure" is going to be a lot more expensive than the disease. You will have to increase administrative staffs, ie: internal auditors, more separation of duties, more expensive audits. This money is going to come right out of yuor student programs unless you are willing to raise your taxes to pay for them.
Certainly Albany is not going to help you, and for all their grand standing, they have a lot of nerve to criticize when they can't keep their own house clean. I see it just as much of a "fraud" to have politicians in office that don't do thier jobs, like adopting budgets on time so school districts can know before the budgets are voted on- how much less they have to work with this year over last year.
How many years has it been since they adopted a budget on-time?
Why do they keep the state aid formulas in a state of confusion all the time? So no one can tell where the $ is going!

[finding bull]

they are finding bs in the schools

audit them all

[see]

What a great idea. Taxes aren't high enough. Let's have the state audit every district so Hevesi can stand on a podium and proclaim that he is defending the tax payer dollar. And while defending that dollar would you mind raising taxes so he can hire a bunch of kids that don't know the specialized field of school district audits.

Has anyone ever attended a fraud seminar in which a state auditor spoke? The state representative looked like an amateur next to the other professionals who gave their lectures.

The previous poster is right. Corruption, greed and collusion are what caused Roslyn to happen. Not a "poor" audit.

Remember, hindsight is 20/20. Has a state audit found anything at a school district in which fraud wasn't already found? Answer: Nope.
It's very easy to find fraud when you know it's already there.

[who next boe]

:twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

[LI-Observer]

It seems to me that Miller Lilly and Pearce (or at least Miller) was involved.. read the 3/2 audit..

http://www.osc.state.ny.us/localgov/muni/audits/2005/schools/roslyn2.pdf

Page 15 and Page 22

He served as Asst Supt for Business for 2 weeks after Gluckin left and, someone from his company Finance Manager was onsite at Roslyn last February calling all of the crooks and then changing vendor names on the computer system! Wonder why he has moved out of state and had to surrender his passport. Over 11 millions dollars is a bit much to let slip... I bet he is involved and that he not only covered it up but also profited.


Just my opinion... anyone else?

[See]

Hmmm. I don't know about Miller being part of it. It's possible, but it seems as though the payment mentioned on Page 15 for the $18,000 was probably for the audit services provided in locating the initial fraud and subsequent testing. Pure speculation, but it seems reasonable.

The item on page 22 also may have involved Miller but was more likely Rigano at work. The fmadmin user appears to be a maintenance username. Anyone trying to cover up would naturally use that name to make any activity to simply appear as though it was routine system procedures. Could have been Miller, but I'm sure anyone familiar with the system at the time and also defrauding the district would have definitely known to use that login as opposed to their own. So while there is a possibility it was Miller, chances are that it's probably Rigano or even FT himself. Who knows.....

Are you sure Miller moved out of state? Last I heard, the CPA firm had dropped it's clients, but that's all.....

[See]

PS - In reviewing the names of individuals receiving money, I didn't see Miller's name. This audit was VERY in depth and I tend to think that if Miller was benefiting in some way it would have come out by now.

(Entities Audited By Miller, Lilly & Pearce)
(Brookhaven-Comsewogue)

Um now isn't that just a fine one. It's funny how there is BIG trouble with LAVALLE and his People who runs Brookhaven.
I think that the DA should really investigate throughly! There is too much of a coinicidence here. Unfortunatly it's OUR money that we are losing to this corruption, that is happening every single day!
It's in the Towns, School Districts, Fire Districts. Everywhere! WIDE SPREAD INSANITY!

[See]

Um......Brookhaven-Comsewogue is the official name of the Comsewogue school district NOT Brookhaven Township and Lavalle.

Does ANYBODY here know what they are talking about?

Bunch of people yelling how the sky is falling............

[LI-Observer]

Like I said.. it was my opinion. But, what was he doing acting as Asst. Supt of Business? And since he had full access to that office, he would have to have been blind to not see that money was missing. I cannot believe that he kept silent for all these years about it. And remember, there is 1.5 million UNACCOUNTED for. Andy Miller is not a stupid man.

[See]

True.....forgot about the 1.5......... :shock:

I'm sure all will be revealed eventually. Right now, I don't think he had anything to do with it.

[whatsupwiththat]

isn't William Rothaar the deputy commisioner of finance for the town of brookhaven, and was the treasurer of Rosyln?

Didn't MML report the first 250G to the BOE that opened the door to all the scrutiny? Maybe I'm missing something here but if they were involved why would they even do that. It's my understanding that the BOE basically told them that it would be handled internally and that they didnt have to look any further. If MML were so bad why were they hired (by the state?) to do a forensic audit on WFD?
It seems to me that the state should be the one keeping tabs on the auditors that have been reporting to them for the last 20 years. Why didn't the state do it's job?

[See]

That was also my impression. The state is misleading when they say that MLP only found $232,000 when the state found $1.2 million during the same time period. MLP apparently found the $232,000 within a few hours (not weeks or months.....hours) and then brought the findings directly to the Board. The Board then decided to handle the matter internally. The findings were brought to Tassone, everybody's favorite superintendent, who obviously then hushed it up in an effort to cover his own tracks.

It's my understanding that MLP brought the findings to the Board with the intent to investigate further. An external auditor does not function as a fraud investigator. They are retained to opine on the validity of the financial statements. An ongoing fraud investigation (forensic audit to use the "buzz" term) has to be approved by the Board. When no such approval was given by big Bill Costigan and his pals, no further investigation was conducted until NYS got involved and Hevesi brought in his soldiers of fortune.

So the state's findings of $1.2 million as compared to MLP's findings of $232,000 is very misleading.

If MML were so bad why were they hired (by the state?) to do a forensic audit on WFD? It seems to me that the state should be the one keeping tabs on the auditors that have been reporting to them for the last 20 years. Why didn't the state do it's job?

MLP isn't so bad. If they were, do you honestly think they would have been kept around for so many years? Were 55 schools districts and many other villages, libraries and fire districts also duped? Not likely. They should have found the fraud at Roslyn sooner, but they were also working against group of people intent on defrauding the district. Once you have that, you have collusion and all bets are off.

MLP is painted as being this horrible entity for one reason only. It serves the interests of Alan Hevesi and the NYS Comptroller's Office. Mr. Hevesi wants to be governor and wants $5 million dollars to hire more auditors (who know NOTHING about schools, btw). Frank and Pam gave him his platform and now he's going to run with it. I can't say I blame him. Smart move.

MLP aren't the crooks in this thing. The almost 30 individuals listed in that report are.

** Please note that the preceeding is simply the best analysis I can come up with from the pieces I've put together. I could be wrong on the whole thing, but I honestly don't think so........

[Roslyn legal Question]

Is there a lawyer who would please answer the following?
Can Roslyn's theft be considered an act of orgainized crime? Could and would federal charges be brought and how could that impact recovering funds and prosecution?

Why did MLP close up shop so fast?

[LI-Observer]

MLP is not so bad? Have you read the audit?

"We found numerous deficiencies in this audit. Nine of 22 required professional standards for such an audit were violated. Violating any one of those standards can lead to professional sanctions. For example, an auditing firm is required to be independent of the school district it is auditing. We found obvious conflict of interests, clearly prohibited by professional standards. The CPA firm had designed and developed computerized accounting software and sold it to the District. The CPA firm also provided ongoing support and periodic upgrades and maintenance for this software. Thus, when the firm was auditing the accounting system, they were auditing their own work. In addition, the firm was involved in selling to the District student tracking software. They therefore had a financial relationship with the District outside the audit, a direct conflict of interest.

When testing transactions, the CPA firm did not review cancelled checks. Such a review is basic and elementary. In fact, the name on some checks was different than the vendor name for those checks shown in the District’s records. Because they didn’t review the checks, they missed this obvious fraud.

In another case, we found that the vendors listed on the CPA’s workpapers for certain payments were not the vendors listed in the District’s records at the time the audit was done. They were phony names put into the District records to cover up the fraud. And they were put into the records after the CPA’s audits were completed. In other words, the CPA had fraudulent information in its workpapers supposedly completed in 2002 and 2003 that was not put in the District’s records until 2004.

We asked the CPA firm to explain this discrepancy. The CPA told us that he was given the vendor names by the former Assistant Superintendent. This is an extraordinary admission for two reasons. First, the auditor is admitting that he simply accepted the verbal representation of a member of the organization he was auditing without verifying these assertions by checking them against the written records. That would be bad enough. But consider, the Assistant Superintendent is the person the auditor found to have stolen $223,000. She had resigned before the second audit reviewed by us was done. So she was not around to provide the fraudulent information during this second audit. The fact that the workpapers presented to us, and ostensibly produced in the summer of 2002 and 2003, contain phony vendor names that do not appear in the District computer records until February 2004, when someone changed the vendor names in an attempt to cover up the theft, is more than troubling.

In 2002, a whistleblower went to the CPA firm with evidence that a theft had occurred in the District. As a result, the District asked the firm to identify the amount taken. The CPA firm calculated that $223,000 had been stolen from the District by the Assistant Superintendent. The firm then helped District officials keep this fact secret from the public and other interested agencies, such as the State Education Department, the District Attorney, and my Office. Even though it was aware of this theft, the CPA firm made no effort in its audit for the 2002-03 fiscal year to actively look for fraud or other questionable activity, as required by national audit standards.It is of course now obvious that had the CPA firm done its job and looked for additional fraud, it would certainly have found plenty. In addition, when we replicated the work that the CPA claimed he did in calculating the $223,000 theft in the fall of 2002, we identified $1.6 million in questionable transactions, not $223,000. How this could have occurred, what actually happened, how more than $1.3 million in additional questionable transactions could have been ignored, is a job for the Nassau County District Attorney to determine. "

Yes, MLP was in over 50 school districts, and these districts depended on them. So what did they do? They let all of them down. If they are so good, where are they now? They are supposed to oversee the finanaces of all of these school districts - taxpayers money! Now 50+ districts have no one auditing their books for the 2004-2005 school year. That is a disgrace.

[See]

I thought I addressed some of those points previously and went into detail about the disparity between $1.6 million and $232,000. Did you read any of that?

Further more, have you read what the 9 violations are?

Far fetched to be sure. Do you honestly believe that the audit firm did not maintain work papers? That's just one example of stretching the truth.

Why did they close? Who knows.....but would you hire them? Think about that and you might have some idea why they are no longer in business.



Yes, MLP was in over 50 school districts, and these districts depended on them. So what did they do? They let all of them down. If they are so good, where are they now? They are supposed to oversee the finanaces of all of these school districts - taxpayers money! Now 50+ districts have no one auditing their books for the 2004-2005 school year. That is a disgrace.

Let all of them down? Remains to be seen. So far fraud has only been found in Roslyn.

Do you honestly believe no one will audit the books of those schools? There are other firms on LI.

Where are they now? Ask Mr. Hevesi. If you'll remember, his office is the one that hadn't audited a single school in over 25 years. Shall we talk about neglect now?

[your next]

its coming to your area :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

[newsday today]

read newsday today :twisted:

[whats new 2005]

whats new :oops:

[Gino Vinelli]

Where can I find out info on what districts are scheduled to be audited this year??

call hevesis office

[tax pac6]

Do them all :oops: