The Trolley Dodgers

Case Study Group

Albancis, Rodante
Fuertes, Kate Rowie
Patayan, Darlene
 Executive Summary
The case starts when the Trolley Dodgers, a professional baseball team joined the
National League. Over the following years, the Dodgers would have considerable
difficulty competing with other baseball teams in New York City area because they
were better financed and the players are of higher caliber. But things changed when the
Dodgers moved at Los Angeles where Walter O’ Malley purchased a lot downtown Los
Angeles for the site of his new baseball stadium. During 1980s and 1990s, the Dodgers
reigned as the most profitable franchise in baseball with pretax profit margin
approaching 25% in many years. In late 1997, Peter O’ Malley, Walter O’ Malley’s son
and the Dodgers principal owner sold the franchise for $350 million to media mogul
Rupert Murdoch. Without knowing, Edward Campos, the long time accountant of
Dodgers designed and implemented a new payroll system that reportedly only he fully
understood. This is where all the fraudulent schemes happened.
 Statement of the Problem
Trolley Dodger’s have weak internal control design and they don’t have
independent checks of performance of the system.
 Areas of Consideration
• Campos padded the Dodger’s payroll by adding fictitious employees to
various departments in the organization.
• Campos inflated the number of hours worked by several employees and then
split the resulting overpayments fifty-fifty with those individuals.
• Several employees including ushers, security guards, and ticket salespeople
we’re being paid unusually large amounts.
 Alternative Courses of Action
• There should be a strict access of the accounting system of the organization.
Advantage: Strict access of accounting system is important because too much
familiarity with the access of the system especially when only one person has
the access of the system does not integrate integrity and confidentiality
Disadvantage: The one who has the access alone is the only one who can
manipulate the system. Therefore, long time period of information gathering
will take a long period of time.
• Proper segregation of duties among the employees.

Advantage: There should be proper segregation of duties so that the work will
be operating efficiently and effectively.

Disadvantage: The more employees hired, the more costly.

• Monitor all of the employees duties including the payroll, attendance, and
performance. All the work should be check/approve and monitor by the top
management and the system should be understood by all the employees.

Advantage: Monitoring the employees overall work is important in order to

avoid fraudulent schemes.

Disadvantage: It is time consuming

 Recommendations
Our group recommend the 3rd alternative course of action which is the
monitoring of all the employees duties including the payroll, attendance, and
performance. All the work should be check/approve and monitor by the top
management and the system should be understood by all the employees. Our
group decided that this is the best solution because transparency of the system
among all the employees is important especially the approval and review of the
top management without risking the integrity of the system.
 Plan of Actions
The employees must be monitored with regards to their payroll, attendance and
performance because this will reflect in the system. The system must not only
be accessed by one person alone. It should be transparent to the employees
who are authorized to access the system. The top management must also have
the access so that they can check and monitor of what is happening in the
organization.