Are you a fan of chicken wings? So much so that you’d be willing to drop $1.5 million on the stuff?

According to a CBS News item, Vera Liddell – a former director of food services in a suburban Chicago school district – was. She did, yes, buy $1.5 million worth of wings from July 2020 to February 2022 — placing hundreds of unauthorized orders, which were then paid for by the district and then received by her. Authorities are still investigating the plan, but it’s clear Liddell — assuming she’s guilty — probably sold the wings for a profit.

How did the plan come to light? A $300,000 budget overrun caught the attention of accountants. Oh, and someone pointed out that the school district doesn’t even serve chicken wings.

The theft of so many chicken wings is perhaps a bit unusual. But fraud at a company is certainly not. Almost every day you can read reports about how employees steal from their employers.

That’s the legal secretary in New Jersey reportedly wrote more than $184,000 in checks from her company account for her friends and family. Or the purchasing manager at a New York company that has been accused by the FBI of creating fraudulent invoices that routed the payment to his personal account. Or the human resources manager at a small manufacturer in Pennsylvania who gave himself collected and also spent thousands of dollars of her employer’s money using the company’s credit card. There is the financial manager of a Minnesota-based property management company which darkened more than $1 million from corporate funds. And the director of accounting services Who stole more than $2 million from her employer and used it for travel and other personal expenses.

Related: I know how to easily steal money from your company’s bank account

There is the employee of a small bank who created and paid himself with cashier’s checks with forged signatures. Or the office manager of a law firm in Rhode Island walked away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fixed funds. Or the employee of a beer distributor in Florida that messed up using the company’s accounts receivable system to steal over $300,000. Or the bookkeeper of a non-profit organization in Delaware Who stole more than $2.6 million over a 25-year period.

You and I don’t really care why these people did these things. And it really doesn’t matter how. What really matters is when.

Like many cases of fraud, these incidents – and countless others – took place over time and were eventually discovered long after the money had gone missing. And while prosecuting these people may provide some psychological relief to the entrepreneurs who were victims, they are still penniless. The money stolen over the years has been spent. Some of it can be recovered. But most of it is long gone. You don’t want this to happen. So what should you do to prevent this kind of thing from happening before it happens? Well, there are a few things.

For starters, you don’t give one person control over everything. You separate tasks. Entering a customer invoice into your accounting system and entering cash received must be done by two different people. The same goes for the creditor side. If three people ordered, received, and paid for chicken wings, one of them probably would have wondered why the school district was buying chicken wings, let alone why they didn’t come with buffalo sauce. You should also have an outside person — an hourly financial temp — do your bank reconciliations.

Your outstanding accounts receivable report — and financial statements — should be carefully reviewed each month by someone other than your accounting staff. That’s you. And while you’re at it, ask your accountant to print out your monthly general ledger activity and take an hour off to read it. It’s not exactly pulp fiction, but your ledger is actually your company’s financial calendar and the devil is always in the details. Identify and investigate any transaction that seems unfamiliar or unusual to you. Hopefully you’ll get reasonable answers, but there’s always a chance you won’t.

Related: How to Reduce the Risk of Fraudsters Accessing Your Business and Personal Bank Accounts

Supervision is crucial. A friend of mine in the police department once told me that to commit the perfect crime, you can’t get anyone else involved, because once more people get involved, it’s no longer perfect. The same goes for accounting.

Another key tactic is to demand that everyone – especially anyone who handles your money – take a vacation. If someone is out of the office and someone fills in for that person, not only are you cross-training, but there is a good chance that the fill-in will stumble upon something unusual if something unusual happens. The more vacation time is needed — at least twice a year — the more you may be limiting the amount of time fraud can take place. You don’t need workaholics. You need your money.

It is also important that you have a formal process for disbursing funds. That means getting written approval from multiple people for transactions over a certain amount. The approvals can come using an electronic signature platform, or you can ask your accounting software provider. Yes, even this kind of procedure can be circumvented by the crafty accountant. But putting these controls in place and sticking to them picks up on everything important and at the very least sends a message to all employees that you have a control system in place and care about it.

Finally, get insurance and make sure your finance associates are committed. Make sure you have coverage for theft and business loss or interruption caused by theft. This kind of insurance is relatively cheap, so buy a lot of it.

As entrepreneurs, we all have the problem of trusting too much. We are generally optimistic souls who believe that people would not harm us. But that’s not really true, is it? If you don’t believe me, I have a few thousand pounds of chicken wings to sell if you’re interested.