(The Center Square) – An audit of a nonprofit medical center in Mamou found the hospital was scammed, losing over $200,000 in the process.
The audit of Savoy Medical Management Group, Inc. located in the town of Mamou found their financial reporting mostly lived up to standard in the year 2023. That is, except one instance of wire fraud.
A vendor for the organization was subject to a business email compromise resulting in a fraudulent modification to their payment instructions. As a result, the guilty party managed to receive cash in the amount of $226,330 while posing as the medical center’s vendor.The following month of the incident, September 2023, Savoy Medical reported the intercepted payment to their bank and law enforcement authorities. Wire fraud was not covered by insurance, but the organization was able to recover $81,819 of the missing funds.The Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Office said the unrecovered funds in the amount of $144,511 was a result of not having procedures in place to verify modification of payment instructions for wires. The auditor’s office recommended that in the future, the medical center require a more diverse confirmation of changes than just email correspondence. The issue could also have been a result of inadequate segregation of accounting functions. The audit found, for the second straight year, that Savoy Medical was divvying up too many accounting responsibilities to a select few employees. According to the report, this could be due to the size of the organization and a lack of employed individuals. Whether it’s hiring more workers or having management monitor those functions that are not segregated correctly, auditors suggested they fix the issue.
