This time it's Ikon. 'Copier contracts will cost taxpayers ' It's a new day with a new game.

When public institutions start running out of money and all the budgets are on line, my bet is that we are going to hear about lots more of these. This time the villain of the piece is Ikon. It probably would have made more sense, if Ikon notified the city of the overpayments, instead of keeping quiet and collecting the checks.

Next time it could be any global or independent. If it were me, I would find companies similar to Xippa.net that get paid by the buyer instead of the seller. But I'm not in the game so it's easy to say, hard to do.

Unauthorized copier lease costs big:
DocuCrunch.com
"Unauthorized copier lease costs big
July 8, 2009 by Steve Hannaford
Posted in: Dealers & Channel, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views

From Jacksonville, Florida comes the story of how an unauthorized city employee signed 48 copier leases and cost the city over $3 million to clean up the mess.

According to a story in the Florida Times-Union (“Copier contracts will cost taxpayers”, 10/29/07), the CFO of Jacksonville’s library system signed a series of 48 contracts with IKON Office Solutions to lease copiers for the library system. That’s particularly troubling since Jacksonville only has 21 library branches.
. . .
According to the article, the problem was compounded due to lazy oversight in the accounts payable stage: “The city didn’t detect the problem with IKON in part because it had other contracts with the Ohio-based company. The library was authorized to make some purchases from IKON off a state contract and a city contract. So when McDowell [the employee in question] did turn invoices over to the city’s finance officials for payments, the checks were authorized under the existing contracts.”