Leave firm? Illegal / questionable business activity going on

Whistleblower? Don't you get a settlement amount for being the whistleblower? Then you can take that money and use it to live off of while you search for a new job.

Forgot to mention when I spoke to someone about moving groups / lines of service the first call went great, the lady understdoo our deal flow insanely slow and I want to learn/work more and a transfer was definitely within the realm of possibility.

She spoke to my bosses who knew I wanted to make this move and when I talked to her again she said they told her I wasn't "ready" to make a move yet whatever that means. So essentially I feel like I was blocked by my bosses from moving which is something they have done in the past to others.

I estimate total fraud at least since I have been there (with documented proof direct emails) has to be around ~30-40,000 dollars maybe higher. If I did go through with a whistleblower, which I don't really want to do, would it ruin my reputation in the industry possibly? I also thought that to collect a reward it had to be over a certain amount of money.

Criminal illegal (eg trading on inside information) or unethical/professionally negligent (eg overstating values so clients do larger deals that give your bank larger fees, hence breaching fiduciary duties to clients)?

I appreciate you can't reveal too much. However, getting a clearer picture of which of the above two styles of behaviour will be useful in giving you advice.

$30-40k is a really small amount of money for which to commit fraud unless you're at a very, very small shop, unless it's the secretary embezzling money. Do you have any lawyer friends/family to talk this through to make sure it's actually fraud or illegal?

Not to doubt you and people do stupid shit but I have a hard time thinking there would be collusion in any group to defraud for such a small amount of money.

30-40k is a rounding error at most places.. unless someone in the group is literally transferring that money into their bank account I can't see this being material.

Not insider trading....professional negligence. Just for overall clarification, YTD our groups revenue is 7M and probably 8M by the end of year... so 40-50-60k is a solid amount. Basically falsifying chargeable hours to clients. Client X employs us to do work for company Y. We charge by the hour. Client Y doesn't report to X what we do...and then they make me add # hours onto chargeable time of things I did not do since I track my hours very carefully.

Not to sure how to approach this. I asked for a transfer and was denied because my bosses said "i am not ready to move". so in a tough spot right now

And to add, generally our engagements are small amounts...20-50k in revenue, maybe 100k a few times a year. So I feel like its a pretty solid amount of falsifying given the amount we bring in

EDIT you clarified before i submitted, so yes padding in someway, hours Unetheical, but not illegal. I wouldn't be that worried, but sounds like a bad culture.

Why not just make something up that is positive on why you want to switch in a lateral? Like something specific that you want to do or some experience you were promised but aren't getting at your current place.

I agree its not ethical. However, there are tons of instances where this happens. This is also a perfect example of how easy it is to cut spending at a large company. I guarantee you that Company Y is getting ripped off in 100 other places because they aren't tracking their spending.

Ok great thanks for the responses. Alright wasn't to sure about teh hours, even if I have direct emails instructing me to add them. But I guess its more common than not.

Going to continue my search looking to get into AM was my goal out o fschool still having some trouble breaking in.

I would bet that >90% of businesses that bill by the hour "round up" to some degree. I read the title and was expecting some Bernie Madoff shit...

Public accounting firms do this. To a certain degree...

At $60k overbilling out of $8MM, you're at 75 bps. Rounding error. Maybe not ethical but I wouldn't call the SEC anytime soon.

Good looking out, even if it ends up being just bad business. The last thing you want is to be lumped in with some crazy SEC investigation for a few thousand. They will always fight the small guys because of how cheap it is to prosecute and how high the conviction rate is, and let the Angelo Mozilos of the world walk away scot-free or settle for pennies.

Shhhhh.... :-)

You're right to be concerned, but to be quite honest, even if your firm is caught there won't be a major public/external incident. Probably a quick... our bad, here's a check for the damages, this matter is settled. But 99% likely nothing ever comes of it.

Err'body pads bruh.

I was expecting next madoff or something...honestly, OP takes this too seriously. It is not a good place to develop career though. I'd look for new job while stay at current role. Having career gap to avoid prison is fine but this will not be a criminal case or even lead to fine.

Hard situation

Having employed numerous lawyers over the last few years I can assure that overbilling is certainly common practise!

darn, i was expecting something way more exciting...

There was a leading article in the Economist several weeks ago entitled, "A mammoth guilt trip", discussing the criminalization of american business, which might be helpful to examine (see http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21614101-corporate-america-findi…).

In short, there is an increasing prosecutorial aggressiveness in the space, and it would be wise to seek legal counsel. Also, keep in mind that everything (e.g. e-mails, interoffice memorandums/notes, comments on internet forums, etc.) is "discoverable", and may be used as evidence against you. Pardon the ominous tone of this comment, but the advice stands nevertheless.

I am saddened by the faggotry of the OP

Are you serious - welcome to the real work PS join a real bank which charges on outcomes not hours....

Are you Mr. Fucking Rogers?

Its funny. You can read the comments and tell immediately who has worked for large companies and who hasn't.

Dealflow has been slow? Sounds like 30-50k or whatever on 7mm+ in billings can easily be chalked up to rounding, but the ethical dilemma in and of itself sounds like the least of your worries if your group is struggling in this environment.

And you actually report the number of hours worked by each person at your shop? Surprising to see that you're encouraged to bill more than you actually worked since clients quickly tend to balk over variable rate contracts and prefer fixed ranges or just fixed. Setting the range for 300-400k and then finishing the work with 200k of billable hours but still charging the bottom 300k sounds like efficiency to me, but billing phantom hours on a fully variable agreement sounds like it might be one of the reasons you guys are slow in this deal environment. If you're so concerned, why don't you just tell the person who's telling you to bill extra hours to bill more hours themselves on the project. Alternatively, do some good work and make yourself useful.

Two questions for you: 1) If a mechanic gets you to agree to pay for 8 hours of their time to rebuild a transmission (probably lowballing the amount of time, I'm not a mechanic) and they were able to get the job done in 6 but billed you for 8 seem wrong to you?

2) Are you naive or are you actually Mr. Rogers^?

Didn't you take your FINRA Series exams? Just report to your AML compliance officer and you are fine.

Didn't you take your FINRA Series exams? Just report to your AML compliance officer and you are fine.

This is the most ridiculous shit I have seen anyone complain about. They told you to bill a little more on the hours and the entire year's so called "extra billings" amount to $30k - $40k really ain't shit. I believe you probably have misunderstanding of how the billable hours accrued. Do you track every minute you or other people spend working on the project for this client? How are you able to justify if your conversation with your boss or anyone on any subject that relates to this project is not considered as billable?

Here's what I am looking at that makes your case sound stupid at best:

$30k Billable rate assumed at $300/hr Total hours over billed 100 200 working days a year 0.5 hour per day in billable

As far as I know, firms always round up their billable hours either by increments of 15 minutes to as high as 30 for some.

Perhaps a career in whatever it is that have zero ambiguity is more suitable for you. Go work for the IRS, they'll spend thousands just to chase a few bucks so they can sleep soundly at night know they did the right thing that's by the books.

you could never be an attorney then dude. this goes on everywhere.

Over-billing is actually a felony, depending on the exact circumstances. $40,000 is NOT an immaterial number on $8 million. It's definitely illegal and unethical.

My father was the CFO of a very large life insurance company in the 1970s. He blew the whistle on the firm's tax evasion. He was fired by the firm (pre-whistleblower laws) but the IRS promised to never bother him or his family ever again. (So far so good). So the government will definitely work with you if you ever take it that far.

This also reminds me of the movie The Firm where a very corrupt law practice was brought down via over billing.

My advice is to stick it out for another 6 months and actively look for other employment. When you leave report it to the compliance officer to cover your tail IF you determine that what they're doing is actually unethical or illegal vs. industry practice (rounding up).

jebus, someone got butt hurt and went on a shit throwing fit.

Appreciate the responses...I dont plan on reporting them..just makes me think twice about doing it. Guess its a common practice so I will leave it and continue to look for a newj ob

Hire a lawyer - not the company's, your own counsel

I always get made to round down my billable hours so we get repeat business :(

This is totally normal to pad on extra hours. I've worked at several professional services firms including big 4 and if they quote a fee range its always at the upper most limit they bill out at, padding upward to it if they haven't already gone over. I agree its unethical, but its almost expected. I wouldn't go causing a scene about this. Just put your time in and try move when the time is right. The main thing id be worried about is moving because you work at an accounting firm; which reallly blows. Low pay, lots of hours and a lot of douche bags

I got an unfortunate number of monkey shits for my position. But I'll tell you this--small bits of unethical behavior snowball into large bits of unethical behavior. For your edification, here is a September 2014 article from the Harvard Business Review discussing the findings of ethics studies:

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/09/how-unethical-behavior-becomes-habit/?cm_m…

Here are some pertinent quotes from the article for those of you who choose not to read the article:

"Two of us (Dave, Lisa, and our team) found that people who are faced with growing opportunities to behave unethically are much more likely to rationalize this conduct than those who are presented with an abrupt change."

"But rationalizing minor indiscretions inevitably influences how they view progressively worse behaviors and may lead them to commit bigger offenses (e.g., billing their employers for personal travel expenses) that they initially would not have considered."

Over billing $40,000 on $8 million is still over billing. It's not immaterial if it's 1) illegal and 2) unethical. The guys who are knowingly over billing are probably doing other unethical things (small or large) on a routine basis as they become numb to it.

Seriously, instead of throwing monkey shit at me, I wish you'd engage in an intelligent, adult conversation about ethics. Don't like what I'm saying? That's fine--I'd love to hear your point of view. Man up.

Sounds like you may not be cut out for finance... or any business involving money for that matter.