http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-06/ex-citigroup-vice-president-said-to-plan-guilty-plea-in-19-million-scheme.html
A former Citigroup vice president, Gary Foster, was accused for embezzling $22.9 million and ended up pleading guilty to one count of bank fraud. Foster would wire money from a Citigroup accounts into his own account at J.P. Morgan Chase bank. He would make entries into the Citigroup records so that nobody would notice that he was taking money and moving it to his own account. As a Vice President of a well-known company makes me and other people question all of the executives at Citigroup. If this one executive is willing to conduct fraudulent activities then who knows what other executives are going to do, and not only in this company but other banks too. Foster conducted his business from September 2003 to June 2011. If Foster was able to conduct this fraud for 8 years then who knows who else is doing the same things. It took officials a very long time to realize what was going on. Foster led in a very unethical way and is being punished for it. If Foster would have made ethical decisions then he would not have been in this position. I do not understand how someone who is in such a high position in a well known company can make these types of unethical decisions. I feel that some of the blame can be put on Citigroup for not detecting these wire transactions earlier. Citigroup needs to have higher ethical standards for their employees and especially for their executives. Here are some questions to think about.
Do you trust that the bank you bank at (if you do) is conducting their activities in an ethical manner?
If you bank at Citigroup, how do you feel after reading this article?
How do you feel that the fraud lasted 8 years before it was detected?
Why do you think that there are so many frauds and conspiracies that happens on to executives in well known companies?
Daniel Itami
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI would like to think that my bank is conducting their activities ethically. I mostly want to believe this because I would probably go crazy worrying about whether my money was safe or not. I think that the biggest reason that this fraud lasted for so long is because Citigroup does not have a checks and balances system implemented. If they did, they would have caught Foster years ago. I think that the biggest reason for the amount of frauds committed by executives is because these executives get greedy. Once they figure out that they can get away with fraud, which may have started out very small, they will keep doing it until they are caught.
Danielle Huff
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI bank at Chase and I do believe that they conduct their business in an ethical manner. The thing is, as an individual I will never know if this is true until a scandal comes out such as it did at Citigroup. I think that that is sad, but the only way customers find out if they are involved with an ethical company. I think that it is unacceptable, yet not surprising, that this fraud was not detected for 8 years. Executives are usually not the ones expected to conduct their behavior in such a way. It is usually employees who are not that high up that are watched more carefully. This is because Executives are the employees who are looked up to and seen in a more respected light. I think that there have been numerous occasions of Executive fraud because they have access to more resources and information which makes it easier for them to act in unethical ways.
Faith Gephart Elmore