Thieves have existed for centuries, heck millennia. Not defending WF but remember they have bought up lots of banks over the years. And it's not just banks that are a problem. The WF thing dwarfs the mortgage lending failures leading to the '08 crash.
Where there is a will there is a way, as the saying goes. Some I have learned/heard about over the years, some small and some large.
1. What one accounting professor, when I was getting my MBA, called, during the US S&L crisis in the '80's to early 90's, swapping a dead horse for a dead cow. Most of that was due to failed real estate loans. Party A had a non-performing loan on a strip mall and party B had a non-performing loan on a office building as an example. Federal rules required reporting non-performing loans after a certain amount of time. Meaning non-payment. So the parties agree to swap the properties which are "equal" in value before that threshold was hit. Because each note now has a new "owner" the clock starts all over.
2. When I first started at CompUSA I worked in the front end. Basically the cashiers and money handling. Even back then it was computerized but not really monitored or maintained. Had a junior who discovered that using the petty cash function, which was not used or monitored, to put cash into that account reduced the daily deposit. For example if we had 5k of cash taken in on a day he could put 200 into petty cash. This resulted in a reported cash deposit of 4.8k, which matched the value reported by Dunbar because he had pulled 200. After a couple of months we started getting reports that cash sales totals did not match deposits. Finally figured that one out.
3. Back when I worked at a large oilfield service company we had one division that rented downhole tools that used many liters of hydraulic fluid in each tool. Of course this fluid does not last forever so it has to be changed out periodically. All of the offices were small operations with one manager and 2-4 techs. Even back then you could not just dump the fluids anywhere you wished, they had to be disposed of by a hazard waste company. At one location the "manager" hired his brother-in-law to handle the disposal. The waste fluid was just dumped in a bayou not far from the office. Of course it was eventually tracked to the shop. I heard the clean up was in the high 7 figures, which was a big number back in the early '80's.
Edit: It's all about due diligence and trust, but verify.
