CVBs Gone Wild

Rachel Wimberly -- Tradeshow Week, 4/2/2007

Tradeshow Week's March 12 issue ran a story of Donna Duffer, a controller at the Palm Beach County Convention & Visitors Bureau, who allegedly stole $1.6 million from the bureau's coffers over a three-year period to feed her online gambling habit.

On March 15, according to the Fresno Bee, a former bookkeeper at the Fresno Convention & Visitors Bureau was arrested on charges she used multiple bureau credit cards to make more than $50,000 worth of purchases at numerous stores, including Victoria's Secret, the Gap and Target.

What's audacious about both cases is not just that lots of money disappeared, but the way in which it was stolen — from right under the noses of the people who had fiduciary responsibility to the public.

In Palm Beach, the scandal led to the resignations of longtime CEO Warren "Mac" McLaughlin and Lee Davis, the bureau's vice president of finance, and rightly so.

After all, both of them had to have been asleep at the wheel, lacking an internal system of checks and balances that could have ensnared Duffer at the outset, instead of three years later.

The system that was in place was ludicrous: Duffer was in charge of both cutting checks and reconciling bank accounts. I wonder how that would go over as an accounting system in the private sector.

To top it off, it wasn't even the CVB that finally caught onto what was going on; it was Wachovia Bank.

In the Fresno case, the bookkeeper didn't have total control of the checks and books, but she figured out how to feed what seems to have been one heck of a shopping habit anyway, just as the CVB was undergoing a leadership transition. From June 2005 to July 2006, she charged anything her little heart desired.

Then a new CVB director, Wayne Bennett, saw something was amiss and asked the bookkeeper to shred all the bureau's credit cards. However, according to reports, he admitted that he never followed up to see that she did it — so she just kept on charging away.

As a result, his job is now in jeopardy and the Fresno City Council is reviewing the CVB's contract with the city, also rightly so, since the bureau is primarily funded by taxpayer money.

Think of this as a public service announcement to all CVBs: Before it's too late and someone figures out how to beat your system, particularly if there's barely one in place — take a long, hard look at your internal accounting practices and ask yourself, could someone go wild on my dime?