A WORKER at a council-run care home stole prescription drugs and replaced them with paracetamol, a fraud report has revealed.
In another case, a non-departmental public body lost £12,000 when its corporate credit card was used to by tickets for overseas events in a reselling scam.
And a public body lost £500,000 when its employees used its vehicles to conduct “unauthorised activities” for cash payments during work time.
The incidents are recorded in a new Audit Scotland report on fraud and financial irregularity in the public sector.
The watchdog hopes that sharing the stories will help public bodies tighten up procedures and safeguard taxpayers’ cash.
Fiona Kordiak, director of audit services at Audit Scotland, said: “The level of fraud and irregularity we’ve outlined in this report is very small compared to the £44 billion that’s spent across Scotland’s public sector each year. That shows that systems to avoid fraud are generally working well.
“However, there were avoidable weaknesses in all the cases we’ve highlighted, and it’s important that all public bodies ensure that similar vulnerabilities don’t exist within their own organisations.”
The report, which is released today, tells how the drug theft was possible because medicine cabinet keys were used by a number of staff, the review found.
The person responsible, who is not named in the report, admitted the theft and resigned after an internal investigation. They received a six month suspended sentence after Police Scotland brought charges.
In the ticket scam, the perpetrators took advantage of weaknesses in the public body’s finance systems to buy several tickets for overseas events and resell them using stolen card details.
The fraud was not identified until the genuine card holders questioned the transactions and requested refunds.
Tougher systems have now been put in place and the web addresses used for the fraudulent ticket sales have been blocked.
Meanwhile, four people left their driving jobs after the vehicle fraud was discovered. That came thanks to a call from a member of the public and the organisation, which was not identified, is now trying to work out how it can recover any of the money lost.
Audit Scotland recommended that the country’s public bodies “should consider whether the weaknesses in internal control that facilitated the cases identified in this report may also exist in their own organisations and take the required corrective action”.
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