Part of necessary convention business is handling large sums of money.

garybuss

Part of necessary convention business is handling large sums of money.
PAGE 4-1 DISTRICT CONVENTION OPERATIONS WTB&T$ 1997

Counting Money
The accounts overseer is personally to prenumber in ink all the Receipt forms (CO-40) in duplicate (an original and a carbon copy bearing the same number). When money is received in the Accounts Department, several brothers will work together at the counting table. They should be informed of the source of the money and, as it is counted, fill out in ink a prenumbered Receipt form in duplicate. The carbon copy of this Receipt is to be sent to the Administration Office immediately. The original should be retained by the Accounts Department. If an error is later found in the original count, then both copies of the Receipt form should be corrected, with both the Administration and Accounts departments initialing the correction. If more checks are received than lines are provided on the Receipt form, then an adding machine tape with all checks accounted for may be stapled to the original form instead of entering them individually. In this case, a verification tape should be stapled to the duplicate Receipt form. No one is permitted to take money off any counting table until it has been counted, verified, and recorded on the Receipt forms. Also, no book bags, purses, and so forth, are to be permitted around or under the counting tables when money is being counted and recorded on the Receipt forms. An overseer is to be assigned for each table, and he is to see that all these instructions are followed.
PAGE 4-3 DISTRICT CONVENTION OPERATIONS WTB&T$ 1997

blondie

Gary, they have all those rules to prevent those fine, upstanding JWs from stealing from the WTS.

Blondie

VM44

Is that why the Administration Offices are so well guarded at conventions?

They might as well call it The Money Counting Room.

Wouldn't it be great if The Watchtower had a convention, and no one donated any money?

--VM44

garybuss

Ha! It sounds more like a casino counting room than God's back room:-) Me thinks God's counters have sticky fingers and a few got caught.
Just joking, Witness lurkers. Your donations are safe. Hahahaha!!!

Quotes

Blondie, you read my mind.

The Chuckler

With the large amounts of cash generated at District Conventions, I always thought that this would be a really soft target for heist. Especially on the Sunday when the world is invited in for the Public talk.

garybuss

Those nickles and dimes add up. There are special instructions for depositing over ten thousand dollars CASH in the bank.

inbyathread

I counted at assemblies and conventions. At the assemblies no problem just walked up to the accounting door knocked and they let you in. At conventions it was hidden behind curtains and walls and you had a special badge to show the guards um I mean attendants. If you didn't have that badge you didn't get through.

willyloman

Gary, they have all those rules to prevent those fine, upstanding JWs from stealing from the WTS.

It's not unheard of. We had an accounts servant one time who over a period of two years embezzled thousands of dollars in KH donations. It came to light when the PO audited the accounts. He normally assigned someone else to audit the accounts (which went like this: "Brother Accounts Servant, are these figures accurate?" "Yep." "Okay, then.").

However, when the PO did the audit, the numbers looked funny to him. He had audited accounts at the KH for several years and the figures seemed low. He and another elder approached the min. svt. who broke down and confessed he had "borrowed" some of the cash he had collected and juggled the books to cover it up.

He was having personal financial problems and said he "meant to pay it back." It was a classic embezzlement scenario, familiar to many businesses where lots of cash is handled largely by one person. He offered to make restitution, but could only guess at the amount so they settled for $500. But as a former accounts servant myself, I think it was probably a lot more. I estimated he probably saw at least $9,000 in cash come through the contribution box in two years. The audit and review of previous audits showed about half that amount was deposited over that time.

The guy was deleted from the list of MS but no judical action was taken - because he confessed and offered restitution, he was deemed "repentant." Or perhaps the real reason was we felt sorry for him and his circumstances. There was no public reproof. The congo was never informed about the matter.

One wonders how often this has happened throughout the world, what with 90,000 congos.

flag

It has been years since I haven't donated any money on the conventions. I remember very clearly many years ago when they said that if this was Jehova's organization it will survive even if we were not going to charge for the literature etc, etc, etc, so I figured, they don't need my money, Jehova doesn't need my money so I just stop doing it altogether.

Part of necessary convention business is handling large sums of money.

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