Control Freak

We’ve posted before about incidences of fraud that just make you cringe for nearly everyone in a story – well, except the perpetrator.  In those cases, if you’re anything like us Control Freaks (hyperaware as we are of what can go wrong at any minute), you just feel bad for the poor guys who didn’t have the good sense to implement controls to prevent against fraud – or have a way of monitoring the controls they do have.

And then there are cases like this one.  Maxim Healthcare, which had at one point nearly two BILLION dollars in federal contracts for its home health aides and nurses, has admitted to $61 million worth of federal fraud and agreed to pay civil and criminal penalties totaling $150 million. 

Not that it’s a great scenario to have one lone greedy employee who’s pilfering without attracting notice.  But it’s an order of magnitude worse when DOJ investigations (spurred by a whistleblower complaint) reveal widespread instances of false billing, across multiple states. 

We talk a lot about the impossibility of legislating ethics, and how all the technology in the world can’t make people behave well.  This is a pretty bright example of just what can go wrong when a business operates without an appropriate respect for the governance and compliance concerns that should have been forefront in the minds of those in charge.  Sheesh.