The Forensic Accountant

In March, 2006, I spent the morning monitoring a classroom of students taking the ISTEP. When I returned to my office my secretary directed me to a book case and pointed to a now-empty space where about twenty 4-inch notebooks should have been. It seems our principal had come and taken these notebooks to her conference room - notebooks containing ticket reports, copies of claims paid, receipts, copies of game and officials' contracts through 2011 and monthly summaries of the athletic accounts.
She began her investigation by having her secretary make copies of almost every page of every notebook! What a huge waste of resources...not only a waste of paper but the waste of time for her secretary to stand at the copy machine! Then she and her secretary and maybe our treasurer combed through the documents looking for financial fraud. A couple of days later I was called in to face the results. She accused me of selling the same ticket twice - once at the end of an event, then a second time at the beginning of the next event. There it was, a massive fraud scheme...at the rate of $4 per event, let's say 100 home events for the season, a whopping $400...at this rate I would soon have my condo in Florida!
I went to the white board in the room and taught my little class of three - principal, her secretary and the treasurer. For example, at event one, the first ticket off the roll is 1 and at the end of the event the next ticket on the roll is 4 (4 is unsold). This is recorded on the ticket report and by subtracting, we find 3 tickets have been sold (tickets 1,2,3).
first ticket = 1
last ticket = 4
tickets sold = 4 - 1 = 3

For the next event, now the first ticket is 4 and let's say tickets 4 and 5 are sold. The next ticket on the roll is now 6. So we have...
first ticket = 4
last ticket = 6
tickets sold = 2

Ticket 4 has NOT been sold twice, but it has been listed twice, as the last ticket for one event and as the first ticket for the next event. It is done that way so one simple subtraction calculates the number of tickets sold. As I finished my explanation, I saw the lights bulbs go on...her secretary and the treasurer understood perfectly...however my principal had a "deer in the headlights look". She did not get it at all, but she did understand that she was the only one in the room who didn't get it and that her dreams of nailing me for financial fraud were now gone.
I enjoyed the moment (and still enjoy the memory) but then she moved on to something else.