Stephanie Baskill, an unemployed accounting clerk, lives one block from Cleaver Manufacturing Company. While walking her dog last year, she noticed some ERP manuals in the dumpsters. Curious, she took the manuals home with her. She found that the documentation in the manual was. dated two months previous, so she thought that the information must be fairly current. Over the next month, Stephanie continued to collect all types of manuals from the dumpster during her dog-walking excursions. Cleaver Manufacturing Company was apparently updating all of its documentation manuals and placing them online. Eventually, Stephanie found manuals about critical inventory reorder formulas, the billing system, the sales order system, the payables system, and the operating system. Stephanie went to the local library and read as much as she could about this particular operating system. To gain access to the organization, she took a low-profile position as a cleaning woman. By snooping through offices and guessing at pass- words, watching people who were working late type in their passwords, and ultimately printing out lists of user IDs and passwords using a Trojan horse virus, Stephanie was able to obtain all the necessary passwords she needed to set herself up as a supplier, customer, systems operator, and systems librarian. Further, as a cleaning woman, she had access to all areas in the building. the As a customer, she was able to order enough) goods so that the inventory procurement system would automatically trigger a need for a purchase of raw materials. Then, as a supplier, Stephanie would stand ready to deliver the goods atified price. She then covered her tracks by adjusting the transaction logs once the bills were paid.. Stephanie was able to embezzle, on average, $125,000 a month. About 16 months after she spec began working at Cleaver, the controller saw her arrive at a very expensive French restaurant one evening, driving a Jaguar. He told the internal auditors to keep a close watch on her, and they were able to catch her in the act.

Required: 

a. What weaknesses in the organization's control structure must have existed to permit this type of embezzlement?

b. What specific control techniques and procedures could have helped prevent or detect this fraud?