Hovland Forensic

Payroll & Expense Fraud Investigation

Ghost employees, fake receipts, and padded reimbursements all leave a paper trail. We follow the money before it disappears.

Your Payroll Is Someone Else’s Profit Center

Payroll ghosts, manipulated timesheets, and forged expenses can drain six figures before the books reach the controller. Our job is to expose those leaks.

Exactly What We Examine

  • Phantom employees, duplicate SSNs, and inflated hourly rates
  • Doctored expense reports and duplicate reimbursements
  • Falsified receipts and out-of-policy travel claims
  • Shell vendors and bank reroute tricks
  • Timesheet “buddy-punch” patterns and off-cycle bonuses
  • Corporate credit-card misuse and personal purchases

Methodology Timeline

Anomaly analytics on payroll GL and expense batches, flagging identical-dollar submissions, weekend entries, and ghost IDs in one billing period.

Cross-check cash or bank statements, receipts, vendor invoices, and ACH records against submitted timesheets or expense vouchers, spotting duplicate bills before employees know you’re looking.

Quantify fraud by employee, by pay period, by vendor, and by expense category; include future exposure so you know how much to claw back.

Hand-off: concise executive summary plus fully cited PDF ready for deposition, zero Daubert challenges.

Results Delivered for Clients

HOA Dues Theft

Management company was stealing homeowner’s dues from absent homeowners. Management company transferred funds directly from HOA bank account into their account. HOA collected on insurance policy due to fraud, management company was referred to the State for prosecution. 

Employee Embezzlement

Longtime employee was stealing customer payments on AR. Forensic tracing of timestamped reports and customer receipts clearly showed how employee was working the scheme. Employee took plea deal with DA.

Industry-Sourced Insight: ACFE Fraud Statistics

According to the “Occupational Fraud 2024: A Report to the Nations”

With losses this huge nationwide, every missing dollar hurts, see how defensible evidence flips the odds and protects what’s yours.

Do you need direct access to our ERP?

No. Scans of reports and bank records are enough, but we can set up read-only access if you prefer.

Is the investigation billed hourly or flat-rate?

We work exclusively at a transparent $250 per hour. 

Do I have to inform employees before starting the investigation?

No. We can review books quietly using the documents you already control, payroll reports, expense apps, bank statements, until you decide the next step.