Accountant witnesses

Accountant witnesses

For money to be transferred illegally, an alteration must have been made to the accounts or there must be an inadequacy in the system that allows a transfer to take place without reflection of such in the records.FN46 An accountant called to explain the record keeping system of the victim may be a good witness to establish the vulnerability or unreliability of the computer system; thereby further raising the issue of reasonable doubt.FN47 The accountant should specifically be asked if the victim is required to report occurrences such as the one in question, whether the computerized part of the victim's system is audited in the same way as a manual system, and whether the auditing system detected any computer crimes prior to the instant case.

If the accountant produces charts purporting to represent the dimensions of the crime, these may be objected to if they are prejudicial to the defendant.FN48