OAKLAND Shelbee Szeto pleaded guilty today to wire fraud, money laundering, and a relate tax charge in a scheme to defraud her former employer out of more than five million dollars, announced United States Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Special Agent in Charge Mark H. Pearson. The guilty plea was accepted by the Honorable Haywood S. Gilliam Jr., United States District Judge. According to the plea agreement, Szeto, 30, of Fremont, was employed by HP, Inc. (HP) as an executive assistant and finance planning manager from approximately August 2017 until June of 2021. In these roles, Szeto was responsible for making payments to HP vendors and was issued multiple HP commercial credits cards to make the payments on HPs behalf. Rather than make payments in accordance with the companys policies, Szeto devised a fraudulent scheme whereby she sent approximately $4.8 million in unauthorized payments from her HP commercial credit cards to several Square, PayPal, and Stripe merchant accounts under her control. The plea agreement provides several details of the scheme. For example, the agreement describes how, as part of her employment with HP, Szeto was issued multiple American Express commercial credit cards that were intended only for business expenses. Szeto then set up bogus merchant accounts with PayPal, Stripe, and Square that she maintained under her control, but represented were for legitimate vendors. Szeto then unlawfully sent payments from the credit cards to the bogus accounts. To further her plan, Szeto uploaded falsified invoices to HPs internal system and falsely represented to HP that the payments were made to legitimate vendors. She also made false representations to Square that the payments sent from the credit cards were sent to HPs approved vendors for legitimate business transactions and falsely represented to her bank that the money from HP was for legitimate business transactions. According to the plea agreement, Szeto caused at least $4.8 million to be fraudulently from HP accounts to accounts she controlled and attempted to steal an additional approximately $330,000 from HP. Szeto acknowledged that the total loss and attempted loss from her scheme was at least $5.2 million. Furthermore, the plea agreement contains a list of items for which Szeto has forfeited her interest. The list includes items such as the proceeds of a First Republic Bank account; a 2020 Tesla sedan; a 2021 Porsche sport utility vehicle; several bags and purses from Dior, Gucci, Hermes, and Chanel; and a collection of jewelry and timepieces including necklaces, rings, pendants, and watches from Rolex, Bulgari, Audemars Pignet, and Cartier. The list has 161 line itemssome lines of which include multiple items such as 7 necklaces with clover-shaped design, 6 gold necklaces with pendants, and 26 pairs of earrings. Case: HP manager Fraud

Question : Assuming you are the external auditor of HP company, you are required to provide elements of internal control which were missing resulting in HP manager stole millions of US dollars from HP multinational company?