#105 Miami CPA

Sometimes life seems like your wheel came off the track in the carwash of hell. Nothing makes sense, there’s foam everywhere, and you keep getting slapped by giant strips of cloth. “What’s it all about?” you cry. A deep voice resonates from the behind the torrent of soapy water. “You should have ordered the hot wax...”
So life must seem to the key person in a recent news story. Now, like President Bush’s press secretary Scott McClellan, it is not my policy to comment on an ongoing ethics investigation—unless I can get an unchallenged statement in for my side—but the story in the paper about a lady who allegedly embezzled over 900 thousand dollars from a dental clinic over the last three years simply begs for a remark.
And not for the ordinary reasons, disgust over violating trust or amazement that the business was so successful 300k a year went relatively unnoticed. Jeez, in my business we recognize a missing paper clip. Of course, we all have wildly exuberant personalities. You wouldn’t expect that sort of thing from an accountant. Unless you worked for Arthur Andersen. And hey, I thought after the Enron scandal, accountants had to take an ethics course as part of their continuing education credits. Apparently not bilking a healthy dental clinic wasn’t included in the curriculum. “Don’t fleece em? Oh, I thought they said don’t floss em.”
Anyhow. There were two things about the story that really struck me. The alleged embezzler apparently lived a flagrantly extravagant lifestyle. She even had a license plate on her car that said Envy Us. A lot of people think that was the ultimate in arrogance, in thumbing her nose at society at large, to live off the stolen earnings of two hard-working dentists by skimming the profits like so much plaque removal, and then to flaunt it with a plaque of her own. Envy us. I don’t think so. Envy is a sin. Right up there with Stealing.
The other thing was that the depth of her transgression was finally uncovered by a specialist in the arcane world of embezzlement crimes. The paper called him a Forensic Accountant. I love it. No longer an investigator. No longer an auditor. A forensic accountant. I see a new TV show on the horizon: “Who counts the beans that the bean counters don’t count? It’s Miami CPA. Crime Perceiving Accountants.”
“I think we have a problem here Ma’am, there’s something missing from the debit column.”
“Just one last thing...is that a period OR A DECIMAL POINT???”
“You thought you’d trick me Miss Envy Us, but I found out where you used FIFO instead of LIFO. Now it’s LIFO imprisonment for you...”
In a final irony that even I couldn’t have made up, the Envy Us license plate was just reported stolen from the bumper of the BMW. Not to worry though, authorities assure us the car owner will be learning how to make her own real soon.
America, ya gotta love it.