Seriously? The dumbest expense report padding schemes

Granted, few people who try to pad an expense report would be considered smart. But these folks are extraordinarily dumb.

Take a gander at some of the worst expense report fraud schemes around. (We’ll let you know how it ends: They all got caught!)

Failed Padder #1: The Double Biller. A worker at one company tried to double bill his expenses to both his employer and another company where he worked as an independent contractor. Bad move! It turns out both were clients of the same automated T&E software vendor. The two expense reports were automatically flagged and the cheater was exposed.

Failed Padder #2: The Gift Card Gamer. This employee felt she was entitled to a “doggie bag” of sorts each time she booked a caterer for a company event – in the form of some gift cards for herself on the company’s dime. Didn’t take long to catch on to this scheme and turn that employee into a former employee.

Failed Padder #3: The Hungry Hack. An employee at this company frequented the same restaurant. Did he love the turkey club? Hardly. After pulling several weeks’ worth of that individual’s expense reports the company found the receipts for the restaurant were sequentially numbered.

Failed Padder #4: The Repeat Reimbursement Requester. Getting employees to turn in receipts certainly wasn’t this guy’s problem. In fact, he turned in more than he was supposed to … for the same expense! This employee submitted the physical receipt for an expense the first time around and then again when his credit card statement came in. Didn’t fool this company, though.

Failed Padder #5: The Misguided Gambler. This employee counted on his boss not being too thorough. Or even conscious! He would put fictitious expenses in his electronically filed report, then counted on his boss never inspecting the paper receipts he sent along in an accompanying envelope. He squeaked by, for a while. Then a third party auditor caught the scheme.

Have you seen another failed case of expense report padding? Share it here.