Benford's 2nd Digit Test in the Hollywood Movie - The Accountant

Hello Group Members,

A month back we were exploring Benford's Law in IDEA on random Vendor Payment data files. While we have always been drawn towards the Last Two Digits test to look for amounts ending with 49, 79 or 99 to check for skimming of payments just below internal approval limits, we were pleasantly surprised to see lot of action on the 2nd Digit test for a suspect Vendor. we filtered the data for that Vendor specifically into a child file and applied the Benford 2nd Digit test on the field Payment Amount. A closer look at the Benford Graph showed up significant concentration of 2nd Digit payment amounts on the number 3 for all payments made to the suspect Vendor like 43567, 23886, 13231 and more.

This appeared to be quite a coincidence on string of few dozen payments to the suspect Vendor over the course of the year. A closer look at the Masters for that Vendor presented an incomplete address with non - standard information along with missing key field references. We surmised that this could be a potential Ghost Vendor with just a paper trail for billings subject to a more detailed investigation.

What's even more interesting, we came across a similar fictionalised reference in Ben Affleck's Hollywood movie 'The Accountant' in a quick glimpse and miss scene as the outcome of a Forensic Investigation in the movie.

Regards

Group Admin Team