A title company was “too busy” to reconcile their bank account for over four months. They received a call from their bank stating that their escrow account did not have the funds necessary to cover $1.8 million in checks that were being presented for payment. Basically, the account was overdrawn by that amount. Core received the call from the title company at 3p.m. Core Financial Outsourcing, Inc. rerouted an associate that was traveling at the time to the agent’s location. Starting at 5p.m., the associate began the process of identifying the problem. Because the account was “overdrawn” the title company could not perform title closings during this time, so the Core associate worked around the clock (buying clothes at a local mall) to discover the problem. During the process, the title company was worried that Core would not be able to identify the cause of the overdraft among “hundreds of transactions each month”. After four days, Core reconciled the account and identified $2.6 million in errors which included: $1.283 million in wire out errors, $1.017 million incoming wire sent to the wrong title company, $10K in deposits sitting in files, and $200K in funds never received from a mortgage company. All funds were returned to the agent within three business days. A disturbing point in this case was that the title company, who received the $1.017 million in error, took the position that “we knew that it was not our money and sooner or later someone would be asking for it back.”

          

A title company never reconciled their escrow bank account for over three years. The accounting software they used showed a negative “book balance” of $9.245 million and a negative “bank balance” of $7.525 million. Core started the process of reconciling the accounts, including fixing the software to accurately reflect the balance for both “book and bank.” During the process, Core prepared over $25 million in correcting file entries and identified $176K in interest earned that the title company was not aware of.

          

A title company with multiple offices was experiencing difficulties managing the flow of title information between offices. This resulted in the company not being able to properly reconcile their escrow bank account or review individual file information. Upon reviewing the structure of the company and the related software system, Core identified that the entire office operation including the software was initially set-up wrong. Core orchestrated a series of meetings with various professional vendors to correct the problem. Now, the “main office” has complete access to all title information throughout the group of offices, and financial information is seamless and in “real time.”
          

While helping a client reconcile three years of financial data, we discovered that the bank processed and posted a $150,000 deposit as $15,000. Because the client did not reconcile their accounts in the past, they did not discover the error. In fact, the bank did not discover the error as well. What makes this case even more troubling is the fact that the error took place five months prior to our engagement and the bank never discovered it. Upon notifying the bank of the error and a subsequent bank investigation, the bank corrected the error by depositing $135,000 into our client’s account.

          

While a client was on vacation, an employee decided to give herself a pay raise. Upon reconciling the bank statement, we discovered the misappropriation and full restitution was made.

          

Client initiated a wire payment to a mortgage company for $122,400. The bank sent the wire twice in error. The mortgage company and the bank never contacted the client about the error. Upon reconciling the bank account, the error was detected and the client requested the funds back from the mortgage company. The mortgage company’s response was “we were waiting for your call.”