Credit Cards Online Information

JENNIFER, THE ASSISTANT Jennifer treasurer at ABC Corp. in New Orleans, opened an e-mail from a former colleague who no longer worked for the organization. The e-mail read: "Hi Jennifer, there should be a refund of $716 on my old corporate Visa card from the IP Conference. I paid for, but did not attend, the conference and did not turn in the charge to ABC for reimbursement. Can you have Visa issue a refund check to me? Thanks very much for your help."

The e-mail was from Larry, a former ABC executive who had been Jennifer's boss at one time. The message seemed innocuous enough. Larry had legitimately charged a business conference to his corporate credit card, but he had canceled his registration because he left the company. Therefore, he was due a refund.

It would have been very easy for Jennifer to trust her former boss and get him the refund. Instead, because something didn't seem quite right, she chose to check on whether ABC had already reimbursed Larry for the conference.

To make this determination, Jennifer accessed Larry's corporate credit card records online and retrieved his expense reports from the accounts payable file room. The expense reports confirmed that Larry had not expensed the conference fee, but when Jennifer looked at his credit card statement, she saw a couple of odd items.

First, the most recent statement indicated that the former ABC executive had made four payments to his credit card in one month. Second, the statement was two pages long, and Jennifer knew that Larry rarely traveled for business. She scanned the charges and noted that most of them were from local vendors. In addition, none of the items looked like business charges. The charges included dinners at local restaurants, department and grocery store charges, and airline tickets for Larry and his wife that Jennifer knew were for their recent vacation.

# posted by Medical Information : 5:43 AM