Taking a closer look at the those close out sheets from the Airways Auto Tag Agency mess...

Yesterday we went over the "closeout sheets" that are at the center of the Airways Auto Tag Agency case.  These closeout sheets are used by the tellers to account for the money they turn in at the end of the day, the sheets allow the tellers and bookkeepers to break down what's in the tellers drawer by denomination, once all the money is accounted for, everything is totaled up for review then the sheet is signed by the teller and the bookkeeper.

 
The owner of the tag agency tells the state that the tellers entered erroneous information on these handwritten closeout sheets to cover up their alleged theft of tens of thousands of dollars.  Let's take another look at the closeout sheet from December 23, 2010, the date that the owner claims there was thousands of dollars missing, as always, click on the image to enlarge...

Ok, here we have a form that's filled out by hand simply inventorying what was in the tellers drawer for the day broken down by denomination and by check.  Simple enough.  According to the owner of the tag agency, Ileana Martinez de Castro, the agency checks these "close out" sheets for accuracy, scans them then destroys the originals.  Ok, so far so good.  The first problem that jumps out after a quick glance at the sheet is that the numbers don't make sense, IE eight quarters don't equal one dollar and four twenty dollar bills don't equal two hundred dollars.  Strange.  What's even stranger is that no one on the bookkeeping side of equation picked up on these simple mistakes that a second grader should have been able to recognize?  Even worse, whoever reviewed these closeout sheets didn't see this mistake till several months later when they realized there was all kinds of money missing?  That's hard to believe at the very least.

What set me off yesterday was Ms Castro's rambling testimony and her mention of something about lines on the sheet being distorted as a result of the scanning, that caused me to take a closer look.  I reexamined the closeout sheet again and found several issues, issues that I suppose Ms. Castro attributes to scanning.  Here is a another look at the closeout sheet with the anomalies pointed out by the red arrows...

Let's start with the item labeled "A", here's a closeup...

What we're looking at is the number "1" in the box that accounts for quarters.  Look at the top of the one where it meets the horizontal line, see anything strange?  See how the line on the top gets thinner just to the left and right of the one?  Now look to the left of the one and follow down, see what I see?  I've outlined it in red here...

See what I'm saying?  You can clearly see handwriting underneath what looks to be a cut and pasted image of the number "1".  Here are the two images side by side for comparison...

When you look at the two images side by side, it's clear that there's been some sort of alteration to this document.  Let's move on, now we're going to look at item "B"...

Now, what's bizarre about this item is that the number "2" we see here doesn't match the number "2" that we see anywhere else on the sheet.  For comparisons sake, I've collected all the number 2's from this sheet and put them side by side...

Does that number two look like it was written by the same hand?  Hardly.  Moving along to item "C"...

Once again we see a number that looks like it had something else underneath it.  Another anomaly attributed to scanning?  I don't know about that.  Now let's look at item "D"...

What happened to the line under the number two?  Another issue created by the scanning process or was there some sort of alteration here that obscured the line?  Oddly enough this is in the twenty dollar row where the math is screwed up as well.  Somehow this number two doesn't exactly match the other number two's that we know were written by the teller in question.  On to item "E"...

Now here we have two issues, first we have a handwritten number "3" that doesn't match the other number 3's on the closeout sheet...

...as well as a handwritten number "2" that doesn't match any other number 2's anywhere else on the sheet...

How did that happen?  Last but not least is this strange area towards the bottom of the sheet that I've circled in red and labeled  "noise"...

Could that simply have been "noise" generated by the scanning process or was there something written there that was poorly blocked out or altered leaving this mess on the scanned copy of the closeout sheet?  I don't know, perhaps this question is best left to a forensic document examiner.  What I can tell you is that something is definitely not kosher here, whether you look at each individual anomaly or all of them together, there is something wrong with this closeout sheet.  If the teller wanted to make up a bogus closeout sheet, she could have simply grabbed a blank one and put in the bogus numbers then turned it in.  


What we seem to have here is a closeout sheet that appears to be either digitally altered or whited out and altered by someone other than the tellers that were charged for stealing the money.  Why do I say so?  The difference in handwriting suggests that the person who originally filled out the closeout sheet was not the same one that went back in and put in the new numbers as evidenced by the different handwriting style.  These anomalies coupled  with the simple arithmetic errors that we're to believe went unnoticed till months later suggest that there is something nefarious going on here.  Like our old Italian painting from yesterday, when you look closely at this closeout sheet, someone is definitely getting fucked and it isn't a dog that's doing the fucking...