Harriette Walters - BACKGROUND Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Harriette Walters - BACKGROUND - Essay Example Year Money Position 1989 $31735 Accounting technician in the real property division of department of finance and revenue D.C. 1990 $ 47,017 Accounting technician 1991 $ 160,153 Accounting technician 1992 $ 4,711 Accounting technician 1993 $ 246,301 Accounting technician 1994 $ 1,237,425 Accounting technician 1995 $ 1,423,238 Accounting technician 1996 $ 243,425 Accounting technician 1997 $ 543,423 Accounting technician 1998 $275894 Accounting technician 1999 $ 1,244,52 Accounting technician 2000 $ 2,587,831 Accounting technician 2001 $ 3,970,987 Manager of the Adjustment Unit in the Assessment Services Division 2002 $ 3,661,748 Manager 2003 $ 4,771,787 Manager 2004 $ 8,641,720 Manager 2005 $ 6,727,130 Manager 2006 $ 7,697,097 Manager 2007 $ 5,744,497 Manager Timeline for Harriette Walters’ Fraudulent Schemes (Gray & Evans 2011) Working Background   Ms. Harriette Walters started her carrier in 1981 as an accounting technician in the real property department of the D.C office of Tax and revenue. At that time the office of tax and revenue was department of tax and revenue. In the beginning Walters noticed the system and made fake documents like checks and other such document in collaboration with a coworker. Shortly thereafter, she realized that, she can work in a much safer manner. She made the checks refund to her friends and family members. She made fake residential addresses of her friends and family member and made the property tax refund checks. All this work was done with great care, to ensure that the refund checks and fake residential addresses would look normal. These checks ranged from 800 to 3000 dollars but it is nearly impossible to determine the exact amount of checks by the investigators during 1980’s (Jacoby, Lorigo & McCallum 24). Why It Last That Long? The fraud cases were prepared with great care and Walters even checked minor errors and tried to make as less mistakes as possible. The document should look genuine. The fake copie s were made as real as possible. Sometimes the documents were copied many times to produce real looking document (Jacoby, Lorigo & McCallum 24). The official requirements like official letter heads and signatures from different officials were there to go with the refund check requests (Jacoby, Lorigo & McCallum 24). She then prepared the documents which had the fake name and address and rather than mailed, she checked the option of â€Å"held for pickup†. The refund checks were sent to the revenue department from where Walters picked the checks up and cashed them (Jacoby, Lorigo & McCallum 24). Starting the Scheme In 1989, Ms. Harriette Walters processed the first fake documented refund check. The checked is payable to Alethia Grooms having worth of $4060. The next three years, Harriette Walters processed 13 more such fraudulent checks which have the worth of over $65000 which were paid to Alethia Grooms and some other person (Jacoby, Lorigo & McCallum 24). Walter then increa sed the amount of fraudulent refund and focused her attention on the processing of fraudulent refund checks for commercial checks instead of residential property. To achieve her goals, she involved her family members and close friends in her scheme (Jacoby, Lorigo & McCallum 24). She made fraud companies with her family members and other accomplices that never existed and claimed the refund check for the fake companies. She developed a power strategy to

Eddie Mabo, the Indigenous Land Father Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Eddie Mabo, the Indigenous Land Father - Essay Example For almost a decade, this man fought for the rights of his people by taking a case to court with the intention of having it overturn the terra nullius land system in Australia, which alienated the indigenous people from their land. The sheer determination of this man, against all odds, ensured that he had one of the greatest wins in Australian history for an indigenous person, because the ruling made, overturning the terra nullius system, ensured that over three hundred years of injustice had almost come to an end (Pannell and Vachon 2001, p.238). The overturning of this system further granted the indigenous people the confidence of identifying themselves with the land of their ancestors and ensured that their right to it was recognized beyond doubt. Eddie Mabo was a man who rose from humble origins as a gardener to becoming one of the national icons of Australia because of the fact that he was deeply involved in fighting for the rights of his people. While he was born in the Torres Strait Islands, Mabo spent most of his life in Queensland, and was in fact not a well-known figure in his home island until after he took his case on indigenous land rights to court. It was only after his death from cancer as well as the court victory over the land issue five months later that his fellow indigenous people on the island welcomed his as one of their own. His victory did not only affect the people of his home island but also all the indigenous people of Australia and this is the reason why Mabo has become one of the most respected men among them (Burke 2007, p.240). The idea that an indigenous person could almost singlehandedly challenge the Australian status quo and gain a great victory from it was one of those instances which were unheard of in the history of this country. The indigenous people had long been suppressed by the colonial government, and later by the white settlers who dominated and continue to dominate almost every aspect of life in Australia (Furniss 2001, p.279). Mabo’s posthumous court victory ensured that the indigenous people were recognized as a legitimate part of the Australian population with the same rights as those who dominated the society (Thorner 2009, p.391). Furthermore, it may have played a role in the recognition of indigenous people as reasoning human beings who had, throughout the history of the colonization of Australia had been treated unfairly; the court case was therefore the first step in correcting the injustice done to them (Reilly 2000, p.23). The overturning of the terra nullius policy can be said to be, in reality, a policy of inclusion whose purpose is to ensure that all the Australian people have an equal chance to compete in making their dreams and aspirations come true. Previously, indigenous groups were completely excluded from the majority of economic activities in Australia except for those which were considered to be labour intensive (Nettheim 2008 p.167). Moreover, these groups were rarely ever accepted in the mainstream Australian life, therefore, Mabo’s court victory can be said to have been a step towards the inclusion of the indigenous people into the centre of Australian society. From the very beginning of the Mabo’s case in court, there has been opposition towards it with those against it stating that it is giving an unfair advantage to minority