Nonprofit Resources
Margin for Mission Podcast S1:E2 – Trust But Verify – Transcript
Ken Tan:
Welcome to Margin for Mission, the CRI CapinCrouse Cross podcast where two friends, Ken and Chris, bring you real talk about creating space for what matters most. Because when your organization has financial and operational margin, you can focus on your mission with confidence.
Chris Purnell:
We’re professionals who’ve spent years helping churches, higher education institutions, and other mission-focused nonprofit organizations manage their accounting, tax, compliance, and other challenges. We understand the complexities you face and we’re here to make it simpler.
Ken Tan:
In each episode, we’ll dive into practical insights on leadership, operations, and the everyday challenges of running a nonprofit without the jargon.
Chris Purnell:
And we’ll talk about life too. Family, faith, quite a bit of football, and finding balance in a world that rarely slows down.
Ken Tan:
So whether you’re managing budgets, leading teams, or just trying to keep your mission moving forward, you’re in the right place.
Chris Purnell:
This is Margin for Mission. Let’s get started.
Ken Tan:
Well, awesome here, and good morning, good afternoon, good evening for those that are on this podcast as well. And I know it’s a little bit interesting because our fellow friend, Chris Purnell is not on the podcast right now. He is suffering a little bit of a cold. I know for us guys, that hits us a little bit harder. So our hopes is that we’ll be praying that he’ll be doing a lot better. But I am super excited though, just to keep going on with some of the great content that we have here for Margin for Mission. We have some great folks and I’m so excited to introduce Nathan Salsbery on here. So Nathan, welcome to Margin for Mission.
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah, Ken, great to join you. Sorry to hear about Chris. I’m on the tail end of something myself, so I can empathize with that. And when it goes through the house, it tends to hit everybody. So I’m glad to be here with you today.
Ken Tan:
Absolutely, Nathan. Well, I know with Chris not being on the podcast right now for this episode, one of the things that we’re trying to have, it’s kind of a little tradition is just knowing that, as you know, I probably travel a little bit for the firm and with it today has been a running joke, worst 10 at this time. And as you can probably tell, I’ll probably be in a different spot each time in an episode. And the whole hope here is to see what the folks are going to be guessing back on their part when they’re listening. We’d love to give you some of those queries too as well to see if you could figure out where I’m at this time. So if you’re ready, I’ll give you a couple quick facts about the city that I’m on. I’m in the United States, of course. I am in the fourth most populist city in the U.S. It’s known as the energy capital, sometimes called Space City.
Nathan Salsbery:
Houston.
Ken Tan:
Another interesting…
Nathan Salsbery:
Sorry. Did I jump? Did I go too fast? I feel like I’m on a game show and I got to hit the buzzer.
Ken Tan:
No, that works. I was just going to say it also home to the largest rodeo in the world.
Nathan Salsbery:
Oh, I did. Tell that.
Ken Tan:
Oh, yeah. And so one of the traditions we actually do with the rodeo, we don’t sometimes get to go to the Houston one is actually our boys, when they reach a certain age, they can do this thing called mutton busting where they’ll ride a sheep. And so we’ve had our two oldest do that. Our son is going to be doing it this year. So our hope is that we’ll get them through that as a rite of passage, but fun things we can do here in the great state of Texas, right?
Nathan Salsbery:
If no one has ever watched mutton busting, I highly recommend it. And if you can catch Ken’s boys doing it, that would be even better. One of our sons did that a few years ago at the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo here in Colorado Springs, and it’s hilarious. It’s entertaining.
Ken Tan:
Absolutely something you can look forward to and look back on and say, “You remember when you rode that sheep, right?”
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah.
Ken Tan:
Well, again, I know we have a lot of great content. Nathan, you’re on here because this is an interesting subject for us. Something that you and I probably interacted with a lot more than anyone else at our firm. And it’s one of the things I think we’d probably say it’s a lot more interesting to examine than to experience. And it’s one of those things that for us, we know this is something that keeps a lot of church leaders up at night too, is because they’ve seen a lot of their peers go through this and it’s that unfortunate effort, which is fraud. And we have our topic that says, “Trust, but verify,” and I know we’re going to talk a little bit about that, but we’d love to at least first see if you could share a bit about your background in this particular area, your experience so that the audience can get a little background on you in particular.
Nathan Salsbery:
Certainly. Yes. So my background in the area, it goes way back because as a young child, just to start, I’m son of a pastor. I grew up in the church and in that setting and environment and have a great father who’s been pastoring now for over 55 years. So just a long tenure in ministry and is still serving in that capacity. But as a young child in mid ’80s there were some notable headlines that circulated through the major media outlets of notable fraud occurring in Christian ministries. And actually as a young child at that time, we had just gone on a family vacation to one of the ministries that had a big amusement park, Heritage USA, some will be familiar with that, that came to be one of the big examples of some fraudulent activity found within the Christian ministry at that time. That always just resonated with me.
And I was probably eight years old at the time and nine years old maybe, but it just kind of stuck with me. And then the other thing too is growing up, the son of a pastor, my dad was very well-trained as a pastor, had gone to seminary and doctorate ministry degree, but he didn’t have as much training on the business side. And so that always became a burden for him and needing key leadership within the churches that he led with the right skillsets and segregation duties, et cetera. So that really prompted me then as I pursued my undergraduate studies to focus on finance and accounting and to learn those skills so I could apply it within a ministry context and for other nonprofits. So all that to say, I then started my CPA career back in 2001 with a large firm. And interestingly, right off the bat, I immediately got introduced to fraud and forensics and forensic accounting.
And so my kind of bread and butter work over the years has been auditing of nonprofit organizations even at that time. But with fraud popping up occasionally within the nonprofit clients that we served, I got pulled in at a staffing level at that time to work on some interesting forensic engagements, and that piqued my interest. The other notable biographical fact is that my father-in-law’s a retired FBI agent. So it was also in these young adult years, I was hearing his stories of investigations, and that piqued my interest as well. “Hey, I’d love to combine the finance accounting skillsets, help ministries be better, but then also when there is fraud that occurs to investigate it, find out what went wrong, how can you mitigate those risks going forward. And then also from a justice standpoint, try to recoup losses to try to make sure that a ministry can be as made whole as possible.”
And so all that to say, it was a combination of those things that kind of led to this blend of focus area now. And so I do have a Master of Divinity degree focused on church and ministry leadership. And then my latest studies right now is I’m in a Doctor of Ministry program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. And the focus of my thesis and research is fraud prevention best practices for Christian nonprofits and churches. So that’s where I’m at right now and trying to dive into the deep end of that, staying current on how can we help ministries mitigate the risks, try to prevent it. You can’t always prevent it, so try to detect it timely and then how to handle and deal with it when it does unfortunately occur.
Ken Tan:
And I think this is what audience can see very clearly while you’re on this podcast with us. And I know Chris Purnell and I were super excited that you were willing to be on this. I will even say it’s nice that as two fellow pastors kids, we made it okay, right? We turned out all right.
Nathan Salsbery:
Well, and I joke I rebelled, I’m an accountant. But I will say, Ken, it’s been a joy in recent years, just the number of opportunities we’ve had collaborating on forensic engagements and serving ministries that have been victimized. So that’s been a joy for me for the past several years, privilege that you and I working on these engagements together.
Ken Tan:
Absolutely. And the feeling’s the same too. And I think this is where part of it is, especially we start thinking about the term fraud, it happens in so many different organizations. I think the reason why we’re trying to highlight this in our podcast is that it’s going to be particularly focused on ministries, on churches, what we have seen, we’re going to share some real cases as well, but then even just kind of talk through some of the things that we’ve at least overall experienced in terms of major types of fraud ways that’s being done at churches and how to prevent that, right? But maybe we should probably start at the very beginning, and this is where I’m curious if you share a little bit of what you think is, if you had to describe, what is church and ministry fraud? How common is it, do you feel like that when you’ve seen church and ministry fraud?
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah. So fraud from just the definition standpoint with the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, as you would know as a fellow member, Ken, it always involves intentional deception for personal gain. And so there is a level of intent to it. And so fraud is different than just incompetence or sloppy work. Not that those things are good, but those would be different from fraud where there is a level of intentionality. And reality is from a theological standpoint, I mean, it’s just part of the fallen human nature. And so as far as how common it is, it’s interesting you ask because I mentioned I’m in the midst of this doctoral program at Gordon-Conwell. And you know, Ken, you helped me even as I was putting together survey questions for a recent survey we just conducted in November and the results of that began to compile in December. So we’re still kind of early in the process of analyzing the data in detailed level, but I do have the high-level responses to that.
And so as far as victims to fraud in this survey that we had just conducted, and there were 337 respondents to this question, in the past five years, has your organization ever been a victim of fraud committed by an employee? And so almost 12% of the respondents answered, “Yes.” So of the 337 organizations that responded, 39 had been a victim of fraud within the past five years. So pretty notable response rate. Many that listen to this podcast might also be familiar with the ACFE’s Report to the Nations. And Ken, you and I have taught on that in years past and discussed it. And so it’s estimated in the 2024 Report to the Nations that approximately 5% of revenues for organizations is estimated to be lost due to fraud. Now, this would be all industry types, which seems pretty staggering.
At the same time, when you look at even headlines of the past year of the amount of fraud and then other categories be waste and abuse, but even just in fraud, that doesn’t seem as unrealistic as what I used to think when I would read that, because that’s been a pretty consistent data point within the Report to the Nations for a lot of years. So it’s out there. But again, when you think about the fact fraud is a symptom of the fallen human heart, then when there is opportunity, when there is access, the human heart and mind begins to rationalize. And so it does exist within any organization. I think it’s just a matter of to what degree. And there are things we can do, and that’s certainly what you and I are passionate about, help ministries mitigate the possibility of it in the extent of it if it were to occur.
Ken Tan:
Yeah. And I think if I recall, even just some of the things that we’ve seen from other fellow organizations within this industry, or at least I call the field of ministries, they say that fraud is a multi-billion dollar industry within even just a religious sign. And it’s unfortunate because you start thinking about all the billions that came through sacrificial giving. Imagine what kind of impact that could have been done if it was in the right hands and unfortunately ended up being a case of people took advantage of it.
Nathan Salsbery:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think it makes it even… Fraud is always bad. It’s always a sin. It’s always evil. There’s a component of that. And again, it’s that intentional deception component. I think it’s especially problematic within a Christian ministry context because like you said, I mean, people are giving sacrificially to do kingdom work. And so when that’s misappropriated and utilized for selfish gain, it just seems all the more troubling in those contexts.
Ken Tan:
And you bring up that point there saying that there’s a lot of risks in the church side. And I’m curious, I have an idea, but I would love to hear from you on this too, is that why do you think churches and ministries are particularly vulnerable to fraud? Because it is one of those things where we see it so often. You and I probably get calls on a weekly basis about [inaudible 00:13:36] social and we’re like, “Boy, this is recurring. This seems to be pretty frequent.” Why do you think they’re so vulnerable?
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah. A couple things that come to mind. One, even I like the name that you chose for this particular episode of Trust, but Verify. I think within a Christian context, there tends to be a high level of trust, and then there can tend to be a low level of internal controls and checks and balances. And so just that over-reliance on trust and under-reliance on good, healthy controls is one significant reason I’ve definitely observed over the years. I think the other thing too is the nature of a lot of nonprofits in general, Christian ministries in particular, absent the very large ones, you have a large number that have a small number of employees, and then you have an even smaller number of truly well-trained, competent financial or accounting professionals. And so let’s say an organization has one person that checks that box. They’re very competent. Well, that can be problematic in the sense that everybody views them as the expert.
And so they, again, over-rely on just trust of, “Hey, so-and-so can handle all the finances of the ministry, they’ve got it under control.” And temptation can rear its head in this way, just as it does in other aspects of life. And someone with the competency realizes, “Oh, I’ve actually got an opportunity here because nobody’s looking and no checks and balances.” And so I think those dynamics are definitely at play. I’d love to hear just your additional comments on that, Ken, too. If you agree, if you’ve seen other things, those two stand out to me.
Ken Tan:
I think you hit the nail on the head because even with some of the conversations with some of these organizations that we’ve interacted with, there’s that relational side of, “We trusted this person, we broke bread with them, they came over to our homes, we had life with them.” There’s that community aspect that there was not going to be a consideration that this could possibly happen, and then it does. And it really shatters not just the perspective, not just the financial loss, but even the non-financial impacts, because this impacts a community of people trying to help fix brokenness, but even with that brokenness, realizing that happened even within them.
And it’s one of those things where a lot of times I feel like with some of these ministries, and I know we’re about to talk through some of these cases we’ve seen and even some of the examples elsewhere, that ultimately the recovery road, the road to recovery for this is so substantial because it’s not just trying to recoup the financial losses, but how do we regain the confidence and the trust of our congregation and even those that are donating to the mission, how can we do that? And a lot of times it’s almost irreparable is how I think about that.
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah. I mean, true. And to just highlight that point, it’s great when leadership of ministry can respond swiftly with wisdom, great discernment, keep the reputation in check. The reality is we’ve seen the stories play out, and especially in the more notable headline grabbing stories, where in large organizations just crumble almost overnight. And so that’s why it is that it’s a significant issue. It’s hard to salvage the trust when it’s broken, certainly can be done. And obviously the degrees of the fraud that can occur in some of these situations and at the levels that it occurs when it’s corruption at the very top, that’s when it’s even the most kind of a crisis from an ongoing life of an organization.
But all that to say, yeah, you’re exactly right. The relational component of it’s very real with constituents and within the organization itself. So even on the cases we’ve worked on together, part of my heart, and I know yours is too, is just to be a resource for the leadership teams of these organizations that are navigating a crisis because that’s what it is. It’s a crisis and you’ve got to navigate it with great wisdom and discernment.
Ken Tan:
You think about even stories, it came about like the news, how you could easily just do a Google search for a church or fraud. And typically people say, “There’s only two reasons why you’re on the front page of the news. It’s for either something really good or really bad.” A lot of people like to see the bad. Let’s not be on that line, right?
It’s just one of those things, it keeps happening. And that’s where I think as we start talking through some of these stories, which I know we’re about to touch off on, I think it brings a lot more realness to it for a lot of our folks listening on this because you start even seeing some of these other studies, there’s probably a good chance that for a lot of our ministry leaders listening, they could probably think very quickly of not just even their ministry, but a friend who is a part of another ministry that they had been impacted by fraud too. And so our goal as a part of this episode is to talk about not being alone, that you’re not alone on this, but there are ways to really help find some practical ways to reduce the risk too as well.
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah. Yep.
Ken Tan:
Well, with that, I mean, I think this is where the folks listening here are going to be interested on and then to be hearing some of these real life case studies and also even some examples that we have seen. And would love to hear one from you and I’ll share myself and we could probably go back and forth with some of the ones we’ve seen too, but we’d love to hear one of the ones that you feel like will be interesting for folks to listen on.
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And just as a starting point to this topic, I would say a consistent theme I’ve seen across the board in almost every ministry case of fraud I worked on is some level of unauthorized use of credit cards, expense reimbursements. So I just say that off the top because even when you look at Report to the Nations, when you look at survey data from the survey I’ve just conducted as part of my doctoral research, that finding is very consistent and it’s just a high risk area. So I think the case studies that become probably more interesting or even when there is a level of kind of creativity, for lack of a better term, of just things like, “Oh yeah, I didn’t think about that necessarily before.” And sometimes when organizations hear these stories, it does help them just ask good questions over the controls they have in place.
So I mean, one that sticks out top of my head was pretty early on in my career at an organization where the HR director had a significant amount of access to various components. And so she got pretty creative on the methodology of fraud that she was executing within the organization. Again, like it typically does, started small, got bigger. It started largely with she had access to check stock and it’s just because she had noticed it was unlocked, it was left out in the cabinet, kind of an open area. She was also, it was a mid-size organization. So they had a few hundred employees, so it wasn’t enormous, but it was large enough that she was able to utilize the volume of checks that were written to slide in checks that could kind of fly under the radar. And she knew the financial leadership of the organization and knew there weren’t great practices with reconciling bank statements on a monthly basis.
So again, it was just a smart person that just began to realize, “Okay, I’ve got an opportunity here,” and started with just writing checks to cash, started with writing checks also to employees that had worked seasonally, but then they would go back to college or just they would only be working there for a few months. She would leave them on the payroll and she would take check stock and kind of write checks to those names. Eventually it grew. She was writing checks to her own self. And because the dollar amounts initially weren’t huge, she got away with it for quite a few years because start to finish, her fraud was happening for probably about six years. And this one actually did involve litigation and she ended up spending some time in jail as a result of the work the organization did and the firm I was with at the time we did the forensic component of the work.
But there was that. She was also leaving employees on the payroll within the payroll system that had her last name because she had a very common last name. So you think of just the common last names out there, a Smith, a Jones, a Johnson, whatever it might be, that’s just more common than some of the other last names that might be on a payroll. And so she would leave them on that happened to have her same last name, and then she would continue to have paychecks run for those employees and then she would take them. She would take them to a bank where she had opened up, or where she had her own personal accounts and the bank didn’t really question it, probably just assumed it was a relative and she was depositing funds that way. And then she got a little more bold where she would start writing more significant checks.
And then most notably what happened and where she ultimately got found out is she was misappropriating benefit plan checks, so like their monthly premiums and she was staggering payments to where the insurance company was getting checks, but over a period about a 12-month time, what happened is the insurance company realized, “Hey, we’re missing a couple checks here.” And so they started calling the organization, the CFO then started to wonder, “No, we pay our monthly premiums.” And these were big dollar amounts. They were only for 60 to $70,000 a month. And she did that a few different times related to a few different policies. So she ended up misappropriating over $500,000 over six years time.
And about half that dollar amount actually was in the last probably 12 to 18 months where again, she just got more bold and then ultimately was found out. So yeah, that was just one of those things that kind of stood out to me. But I think particularly mid to large size organizations with a lot of employee turnover, just being mindful of cleaning up the payroll and checks and balances, you have a place around that. And then also, again, it’s kind of making sure reconciliations are happening on a monthly basis because it’s sometimes just the fundamental checks and balances that are missing that create the opportunity and prevent a fraud from being detected for quite a while.
Ken Tan:
And one of the things that, as you were thinking, it brings up the concept that we think about from a sin perspective, and this is coming from some of the things that you and I have probably seen, is that usually it starts up really small. This is a small charge here and there. And as it essentially goes to the point that the person’s saying, “Oh, no one’s noticing, it’s okay to keep doing this.” You start noticing just the habit, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And ultimately it comes with these amounts that are so staggering and you’re like, “Wow, just the fact that they’re doing this because they know no one’s watching.” Kind of goes back to our own side from the sin perspective. Unfortunately, there’s a temptation saying, “No one’s watching. No one’s watching. Just a little,” and then…
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah. I mean, just even the perception of detection is one of the greatest deterrents to fraud. And so that’s why having good internal controls in place are so important because even if they’re not the most effectively executed internal controls, the mere fact that they’re talked about that an employee and member of a team thinks or maybe knows to some degree, someone is looking in this area, it does just help keep everybody honest. And so just good internal controls that are well-designed, well executed is the best approach. But just internal controls at all because the survey responses, even from this recent survey I conducted, a lot of times it’s just a mere lack of internal controls that creates the opportunities.
Ken Tan:
Well, I’m excited about even seeing the results on that too, because I think everything that we see just on a daily basis with some of the engagements we do, it really probably reflects even on the results of that survey as well. I have a story that I’m sure it’s one that you and I had looked at before, and it was actually for a smaller church and it was one that we were engaged to do. And I’ll make sure that I keep it as general as possible, but this was one where we were asked to take a look at potential financial impropriety related to the person that was in charge of the finances for this smaller church, actually. And as a part of this, one of the things that we started unraveling was, was before it was with a senior pastor had control of the funds, but then he became ill.
And during the time he became ill, this person started handling a lot of the affairs for the church on the pastor’s behalf. And so we started noticing a lot of checks that were being signed on behalf of the senior pastor, even though the senior pastor was no longer signing. In fact, unfortunately, the senior pastor did pass away after the fight with illness, and there were still checks being signed on behalf of his name by this person. I know, I think as a part of it, they were opening up accounts. They’re also opening up even some loans that were governmental in nature because this person started utilizing the church’s funds for their own real estate ventures. And I think a lot of this is a part of we’re asking, “Well, how did this all unfold?” It’s because there were some complaints within the church and actually some of the local folks, the local authorities, because this person owed them money too as a part of this real estate ventures.
And so that’s where, and we started looking at it, I think some of the losses were closer to half a million, and this person was, I think, in this position for about three years. They didn’t have access for the first year, but then after, once the senior pastor was ill and this person had full-fledged authority, because they had the checks written to cash, they had deposits sent to their own personal accounts that we noticed, those trends, it was pretty substantial towards the end of how much was being done. And I think if you recall, that person, when they confessed, they pretty much told the church, “Oh, I can pay it all back.” I’m like, “Oh, wow, you actually had all those funds, huh? And so you already knew that something would probably come up.” And this was a small church, if you recall too, Nathan, and it’s the only ones where I think it really shattered the congregation, and it was one that we essentially just saw, wow, even in a small church like that, it can happen just as prevalent.
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah. And I think the point you raise of signatures of the pastor, even after he had passed away, I mean, that’s where just good supervisory review that’s actually looking at the content of what’s there will spot questionable activity early on. I’ve seen this time, and again, and you and I both have, Ken, with credit card transactions, that if someone was really just looking at the credit card statement and seeing vendors, and you just question, “Why would our organization have a purchase with these vendors?” Again, would just detect it that much earlier, mitigate the loss amounts that can really accumulate over time. And like the example you just shared, a small church, even when you go through enough budget cycles, the dollar amounts can become quite staggering. So yeah, it’s tough lessons to learn that way, but always great when we can learn from others and try to implement those within the ministries we’re part of.
Ken Tan:
It’s one of those things I always just look back and just realize that this is real life that’s happened, right? And these are real stories that we’re seeing. And we’d love to hear if you have another story to share. And I have one more, at least just knowing time perspective, we should just see what else you’ve seen.
Nathan Salsbery:
For sure. I think one, I’ll share just for any potential listeners that have international operations and activity. And Ken, I know you’ve heard this story before because I’ve shared it in other venues, but years ago there was an international mission’s organization I was working with that had a property in a South American country, and they did a fair amount of ministry work there, but there was a certain level of cash flow that was paid each month for the mortgage on the property, et cetera. Well, what happened is the individual that lived in that foreign country was able to collude with an attorney friend of theirs and they actually sold the building and then leased it back to the organization so the cash flows remained the same and got away with it for a period of time. And then I forget even what the trigger was with that case.
I think there was some communication related to the tenant relationship at that point that finally made its way to headquarters. But it was a period of time and then it became a very convoluted legal process to unwind all that transaction because it was completely fraudulent transaction and the individual pocketed a significant amount of cash in the midst of that. But just one of those things, I think aside from that, which was pretty creative methodology, there are always high inherent risk with international operations. And so would really strongly encourage those organizations, have good field audits in place, just kind of side observations where when you’re sending grants, for example, to other related entities or missionaries on the ground, that you’re actually getting some boots on the ground that can actually see, “Oh yeah, here’s what we gave money for. We can see this ministry work is occurring or that this asset was purchased,” and examine the documents and titles, the ownership for the related assets.
So I think that example always stood out to me of you’ve just got to have some boots on the ground. And this organization had a pretty good process of periodic field visits. But again, if it goes too long, then there’s opportunity and sometimes things don’t get caught in a timely way.
Ken Tan:
I think about this too as well. It’s like just the types of techniques that are being done. It requires someone to be sophisticated. And you’re almost thinking to an extent, imagine if they utilize their wisdom for good and stay away from selfish pursuits, how much better things could probably be in parts of the world, but the human nature of that.
Nathan Salsbery:
It is. And it’s unfortunate because people that commit fraud, they’re typically relatively bright people as far as at least understanding processes and how they either circumvent them or manipulate them. But you’re exactly right. I mean, if it was used in productive ways, it’d be that much more great work and mission accomplishing work that’d be done. And I mean, and you and I know both too, that it becomes a prison for the person that begins to go down that path because once you start, you can’t really get out of it without all the house falling.
Ken Tan:
Well, I know I have another story. It’s a little also interesting as well. It was one that I had done as well in terms of investigation. And this was one where an organization asked me to go do an examination of support funds they were sending to a person that was helping revitalize a church. Because they were just noticing that it seems like that church was struggling even though these funds were supposed to help cover a lot of the main operations so they could really focus.
And as I started getting deeper into it, I started noticing that it actually ended up being that the funds were being diverted not to the church’s account, but actually to a personal slush fund of this person that was involved in this revitalization ministry, that’s how I ended up saying it. And as we were getting further and further into this, one of the things that could be a little bit telling, I know we’ll talk about some red flags is there was already some considerations with some of the interviews of some of the folks there that this person seemed to have a pretty good life overall in terms of what they were living. And they had a pretty public social media account. And so I just took a look and this person took their family to some very nice amusement parks, not just in the United States, but even in some other parts of the world.
And it ultimately turns out that this person was utilizing it as their own personal stash while essentially depriving that ministry of the needed funds. And ultimately, we gave them the report as to what happened. The ministry said they’re going to handle it internally. So this is required for you and I, Nathan, I think this is where for some of these folks that are, especially in the ministry, they’re probably feeling it under their skin, their frustration that for us, we can’t advise to pursue legal or anything like that because we can’t say whether a person’s guilty or not. You can only give the facts that we’ve done. And a lot of times the church will then decide if they’re going to pursue legal action or even consult authorities. But even in that one, there was a fear that ultimately the congregation after they were sharing, their biggest question was, “Well, what will happen to us? What’s all going to happen in that case?” Because they were afraid about, okay, not just the financial damage, but the reputational damage.
They won’t be able to recover from that. Everyone’s just going to have broken trust, people are going to leave. And a lot of times we’ve seen the fear that some of these ministries ultimately then just kind of put it under the rug and move on and just say, “Look, you’re going to pay it back, you’re going to resign and you’re going to do that.” But unfortunately, you and I have probably seen that for some of these offenders, they are repeat offenders because they might have done something at a previous ministry. And that’s where some of the symptoms you’ve seen is that fear of the church is like, “Well, if this happens, what are we going to do now?” Well, it might just be easier for us to cover it. And we’ve seen it. It’s not actually the easiest method. It actually made it be more detrimental.
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah, no, you’re exactly right. I mean, those are really important conversations to have at the leadership level of how to handle fraud when it occurs. And the response to it and the reputation of the ministry is on line and the protection of a future employer or ministry of that individual is on the line as well. And because as you said, it tends to be a pattern. It tends to be a habit that is developed when someone goes down that path of committing fraud against an organization.
Ken Tan:
It’s always difficult and you start to see that. And there’s a lot of things that, especially when you and I see this, people ask us, “Well, how do you guys not get jaded from all this?” And a lot of it ends in, you have to guard our heart, don’t you think, Nathan? I was always curious, whenever we go through this, because you and I, we’re pastors gifts, we’ve seen our pastor, my dad did not live a lavish life either as a pastor. I’m pretty much just doing the same case, but you see this and you see what can happen with people who take advantage. How do you protect yourself or even especially as you go through, how do you take things into perspective so it doesn’t impact how you perceive ministry?
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah, no, it’s a great question to think about. I think it’s important for anybody in the line of work that we do or even just in any line of ministry work that you can tend to come to points. And I’ve had periods in my adult life where I start to have some of those cynical thoughts of like, it moves beyond just a professional skepticism. And so you’re exactly right. I’ve had to guard my heart against that. But I think all they come around where the Lord has led me is reality fraud is a type of sin and it’s a very significant sin in an organizational context that can do a lot of damage. But I think viewing it at the human level is always important that no ministry is completely immune to the potential of fraud. In fact, if anything, I’ve just seen, wow, it is possible anywhere to some degree.
But again, organizations that have good internal controls, good checks and balances, try to be above reproach and are working hard to do that can mitigate the risk. But it’s just important to realize it can happen anywhere. It’s sin like anything else. The human heart is fallen, and so people can be tempted in this area as much within a Christian organization as they are within the Fortune 500 company or governmental organization. So we just should never view Christian ministries as a different context as far as risk of fraud. It’s there because humans are there and it is just a condition of fallen humanity for sure.
Ken Tan:
It is. And it’s one of those things that as you even look at it right now, I’m sure some of the audience folks are saying, “Well, you’ve talked about internal controls all, but what would be some, what is it, warning signs or red flags that we could just be mindful of that potentially gives us the consideration of there might be something there that’s happening?” What are some of the things that you think are some reoccurring red flags? Because I think that the awareness of just being mindful of that, I think long health from this conversation.
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah. I think a couple that come to mind, one, you’ve already alluded to just being aware of who we work with and again, not in a cynical way, but just being aware. I mean, if you notice a lot of highfalutin expenses or lavish lifestyle that doesn’t seem to fit who you know them to be from just… I guess if they have a rich uncle, maybe it comes from-
Ken Tan:
Yeah, maybe.
Nathan Salsbery:
But more times than not, it’s kind of, “Oh, okay, that’s interesting.” But I would say that probably the best red flag within the organizational context that I can think of is actually a person when they are going down the path of committing fraud become very territorial and very protective of their area. So that always increases, for me, by far the professional skepticism of why would someone be that protective of their area? I mean, we all know transparency is a healthy thing, and so you’ve got to have good checks and balances. You got to have more than one person involved in authorization and access and the accounting of transactions that are happening for organization. So when someone gets real protective of their area, if I’m wearing my executive hat, that’s going to increase my level of suspicion of, okay, why is there a need to be protective of this area? What could be hidden here? And so it would certainly raise some questions in my mind from just kind of a red flag standpoint organizationally.
Ken Tan:
And I know this sounds probably ironic, but I’m going to say is sometimes, especially with some of the ones that we’ve looked at, these folks sometimes look to be the hardest worker. They never take vacation, the first one there, the last one to leave. And ultimately, some of these fraud ones that we’ve seen for some of these churches is because the person was working so hard to cover up their fraud that they got sick and someone finally was able to take a look and say, “Wow, some of this doesn’t make sense.” And it’s like, “Huh.”
Nathan Salsbery:
Well, and that’s the bondage part of it is they really can’t leave because if other people start meddling in their area, it would be likely to be uncovered and found out. And so I mean, one of the effective controls I’ve seen and learned over the years is mandatory vacations and time off and having other people cross-trained for their role so that they’re actually are in the weeds for a period of time, those two weeks or whatever, few weeks a year when someone’s on vacation. And if someone’s unwilling to do that, again, red flag, why would you never… I think we all appreciate a good vacation if we’re living a normal, healthy adult life. And so that becomes a red flag there.
Ken Tan:
So what you’re saying, Nathan, is the biblical approach of when God rested on the seventh day, it’s important for us to rest too as well. It’s actually a great way to help prevent some of these risks as well.
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah, it really is. I mean, it makes sense. It’s effective control. And like I said, sometimes the reason fraud goes on for a significant period of time, many times is because there’s just a lack of controls or there’s a clear way they could override the controls. But again, if you have some cross-training going on in mandatory time off and people filling in, those are just good organizational practices.
Ken Tan:
Well, you said the word overriding controls and all. And I’m sure some of the folks on here are asking, “Well, I’ve heard some of the stories about this person was misappropriating funds, this other person was using payroll.” What are some of the common patterns or common types of fraud that you’re seeing that essentially from this finance side is pretty prevalent in the church side?
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah. So again, just to define some terms here, like to utilize the Report to the Nations and association of certain fraud examiners, they would classify fraud into three broad categories like occupational fraud, which would be asset misappropriation, and that’s stealing money or assets most of us would think of that when we think of fraud. There’s financial statement fraud, which would be intentionally misstating the financial statements of the organization. And then the third broad category is corruption. So corruption would be utilizing one’s position for their personal benefit. Well, asset misappropriation is by far the most common occupational fraud, which makes sense because someone’s usually tempted because they need some more money, so they’re looking where they can have access to cash or disbursements that’s getting cash into their hands or other high value assets. So that, I mean, it’s like over 80% of the fraud that occurs with asset misappropriation.
Within that subcategory, it does tend to be billing schemes, credit card, unauthorized use, expense reimbursement, unauthorized use. If someone’s part of cash receipting processes could be skimming cash off the top before it even hits the books and records, or it’s stealing cash after it’s already been on the books and records, but they are able to have access to petty cash or whatever it might be. So asset misappropriation, if you’re thinking about bang for your buck, always have really good controls over that because if you have cash processes, you need good controls, otherwise you’re just kind of asking to be a victim of fraud within an organization. Relatedly though, corruption, while is not as high of a percentage, when corruption is occurring, it almost always includes the other two methods of assets misappropriation and financial statement fraud. So that’s why the worst fraud that happens is when it’s at the high levels of an organization.
That’s a tone at the top issue. And that is, I mean, some of the things we were talking about, Ken, I mean, that’s where an organization can pretty much crumble overnight when you have corruption at the executive levels or a founder, even the board at times. I mean, that’s where an organization’s life is on the line because it’s probably going to involve all the above as far as fraud going on is just rampant within the culture of that organization.
Ken Tan:
Well, I have some of that, and we’ll talk about practical ways to prevent fraud. But even some of the things that we’ve seen before, people are like, “Why do you guys spend so much time on these conflict of interest forms that the board or committee sign? Is it…” Well, it gives at least a good indicator of the potential conflicts of interest that they be having. Because even in the church side, at the end of the day, and I’ve talked about on why I love being in this area is because it’s all about relationships. And even in the church side, those relationships matter. And typically these churches that may be in a small town most likely has someone that’s in construction or in banking or something like that, where they could easily be some of those inner relationships that potentially it may no longer be objective. And it’s not saying it’s bad and you disclose a conflict, but it helps the church know, “Okay, how can we navigate it so we can stay above reproach too as well?”
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for sure it’s best practice. It’s just healthy transparency too. And the good thing is there’s wisdom that comes from the collective wisdom of a board of trustees or directors or board of elders or executive leadership team. When you just put on paper, “Hey, whether this is a conflict of interest or not, here’s something that could be, or it raises some questions, what do you all think?” And there’s just the protection that comes to an organization by having that transparent process and maybe they determine, “Oh, okay. Well, yes, we hired a company that you have an ownership interest to do this service for the church, but it’s arm’s length. Everybody’s aware of it. There was a bidding process in place.” Okay, that might actually be just fine. But the problem is when it’s done without any transparency, it’s not arm’s length.
It’s definitely just advantageous to the leader involved in that. And so years ago, I think it was a professor I heard kind of explain some categories a way to think about things like that. The lowest bar to get over organizationally is is this legal or not? So obviously we want to be legal as organizations. We want to be compliant with laws and regulations, but that’s actually the lowest bar. The next bar would be, is this ethical? And a little bit of a higher bar. And again, good to have multiple perspectives and input from reputable individuals within your organization on that.
But the third and highest bar is actually, is this wise? So in theory, you can have things that are legal, arguably ethical, but they’re just unwise. It’s just not good practice. And again, if we’re ministries that are called to be above reproach, we need to make sure we’re going over that third bar of not just legal and ethical, but also wise. And that this actually holds our ministry at a high level, does keep us above reproach, protects us, and protects individual leaders as well because a lot of these issues, I mean, they are extremely problematic, not only for the organizations, but for the individuals that are part of the issue.
Ken Tan:
Well, you brought up that a book I read from Andy Stanley, which is the quoted the greatest question to ask and is ultimately, I’m as full for everyone. The question is that top one, is this a wise thing to do? And that’s one of those things where a lot of times we get so caught up in that first two that we forget about that more important question. Is this the wise thing to do? And that’s where even in a church setting, it’s so important to be reminded of that as well. I also just think about just from an overall the expectations of just some of the, I would say some of the recurring fraud ultimately ends up being from that whole consideration that people may be afraid of approaching that person because that person is in a level of influence. Sometimes you and I have seen that the person in investigation is the executive pastor or a person in that level where from a congregational side or even as a staff side, it’s nerve-racking to approach the executive pastor saying, “Hey, I’ve noticed some questionable charges or disbursements in this.”
Because there’s a fear of repercussions, not just from the executive pastors, but even from other leadership too. And it’s something where we’re trying to say, “How can we create an area equivalent to a safe space for people to be able to submit something so they feel comfortable sharing too?”
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah, you’re hitting on a key topic, Ken, of just having a good whistleblower policy and process in place, because you’re exactly right. That’s why corruption is so bad because when high level leadership is utilizing their position for their personal gain, when someone beneath them suspects it, sees it, becomes aware of it to some degree, they have to have a safe avenue and outlet to communicate those concerns. So I would say of any organizational control, like environmental control in place, whistleblower policy is key. I keep referencing the Report to the Nations because it’s such a great resource data on this topic, but tips are by far the number one way that fraud is discovered. And it tends to just be an employee with any organization, sees something, questions it, and then communicates that tip to the appropriate party within that organization. So that’s the key is having a communication channel, a whistleblower process.
It doesn’t have to be an external service. There are external services that you can purchase to help manage those whistleblower hotlines, but it very much can be an internal process with the designated audit committee chair is the point of contact, an independent board member that is the point of contact. And it’s well communicated on how you reach out to them in a confidential way that protects the individual. And I think just reiterating and actually creating a culture where you’re safe to communicate concerns is absolutely key. Because again, when you get corruption and you get a culture that’s just toxic and there’s no way to communicate that, the organization life cycle is probably coming to an end pretty quickly, just it’s going to stumble under its own weight and issues of unethical actions and behaviors that way.
Ken Tan:
Well, we’re going to definitely have an episode on governance too as well, because I think a lot of times for folks that have been asked to be on a finance committee, go figure for me at my church, they’re like, “Oh, Ken is a CPA and he’s a part of a firm that does churches. How about we have him on our committee?” The biggest thing to remind them is saying, “Hey, this is not a ceremonial role.” Our goal here is to raise that level of accountability and stewardship. And a lot of times if people get asked on there because they’re good friends and it becomes ceremonial, we want to emphasize that there is a purpose to these committees and these governance boards because that helps allow that ability for mutual, when I say mutual accountability between internal leadership and the board and really helps the organization thrive because it’s allowing that balance that’s needed.
Nathan Salsbery:
Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I would encourage anybody listening to this that serves on any particular board. Don’t let it merely be ceremonial. I mean, take the position with the great importance that it is. I mean, as a board member, the key responsibility is a fiduciary responsibility of looking out for the health and wellbeing of the organization that’s compliant and just good, healthy monitoring of the executive level. Again, that can all be extremely collaborative, but still very healthy and healthy levels of transparency and accountability.
Ken Tan:
Okay. Well, I know we’ve talked about types of fraud. We’ve talked about examples. We’ve seen red flags. What are some practical ways you feel like practical steps that a church can consider to help prevent fraud in their ministry?
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah, I think it always comes down to fundamentals. And I think this is a true story, but I hear that Coach John Wooden, legendary coach at UCLA, he used to start every basketball season with teaching his players how to tie their shoes correctly so they wouldn’t get blisters because that would impact how effectively they could play on the court. So I think it’s a true story, but I like the story nonetheless just because I think it’s a good reminder of sometimes we overlook the obvious things that actually make a huge difference on just organizational health. Again, most fraud happens because there’s just a lack of controls. So doing the low hanging fruit will actually reduce the risk significantly. Reconcile bank statements each month, segregate duties. So never have one person with authorization, access, and accounting responsibilities. Those three things should never be with one person.
Separate them, even with a small staff. You can at least get two or one of those three to somebody else other than the person that has the other duties. But ideally, segregate as much as you can, but do that, review credit card statements. And when you review it, actually read what it’s saying. Who’s that vendor? Does it make sense for the context of our ministry? Churches, there’s always, and even probably in a lot of schools, there can be higher risk of you buy things from things that are easy to buy personal things like a Walmart or a Costco-
Ken Tan:
Or Arizona.
Nathan Salsbery:
Say ask good questions because again, just the perception of detection when you’re reviewing credit cards, if you’re periodically asking the person, “Hey, I want to understand more. Why did we buy a few hundred dollars of groceries at Costco?” And if their response is, “Well, we had a huge youth outreach and big meal, et cetera.” Okay, well, maybe that makes sense, but just that it’s a healthy process to ask those questions. None of those things require a high level of sophistication and financial knowledge. It’s just good process and practice and it mitigates, again, the fallen human heart from being tempted when it knows, “Hey, nobody’s actually looking and I have access to all this amount of money and budget dollar amount and nobody’s actually looking at it.”
So again, good budgets in place and evaluating, “Hey, are we in line with what we budgeted for this line item for the year?” So all those things, Ken, that I know you’ve helped a number of ministries do, I think it’s just learn to tie our shoes correctly and to do it well before each practice, because it saves so much headache and unnecessary pain within the organization just to do the fundamentals.
Ken Tan:
Well, I don’t want anyone to overlook this, that Nathan quoted basketball and in his roots, there are some Indiana roots. So on behalf of Chris Purnell, I think I can emphasize again that Indiana is a football team now.
Nathan Salsbery:
I was looking forward. I wish Chris could have been part of this with both of us having our Hoosier background that’s right. The Indiana fans, it’s not the norm from a football-
Ken Tan:
Not the norm, but hey, something you could be happy about. But going back to even just the consideration of practical things, it’s one of the things that, like you’re saying, when we do some of these church assessments and things like just talking about bank reconciliations, there’s a lot of times we’re like, “Well, you clearly have not been looking your bank reconciliations.” And they’re like, “Why?” And I know I’ve seen some real cases of if people just looked at the bank reconciliations, how easily some of these things could pop up, but because they were just not really considering that as an important task and they were so busy elsewhere, they just overlooked it and that’s where that became a big problem later. I’ll give an example of something else. I was doing a walkthrough at a church that we were doing a church assessment for, and we were going through the account process for the offerings and they had the little side area that they had a counting room.
And I remember as I was doing the tour, I looked up and I saw that there was a camera with a blinking red light, wire into the ceiling. And I was like, “Oh, that’s awesome. They have some security.” And I think their security guy noticed that because as I was leaving the parking lot, he goes, “Hey, I noticed you saw that camera.” I go, “Yeah, that’s pretty neat. You have that.” He goes, “Well, between you and me, that’s not connected to anything. I bought it on Amazon for 40 bucks and people just believe they serve.” But it’s just that perception, right? The fact that someone might be looking, you may not be able to confirm it, but because it looks like there is, there’s probably a better chance I’m not going to do anything that will be below that reproach.
Nathan Salsbery:
Right. Yeah. I mean, there are ways like that to just do some low cost controls that, again, just create a healthy environment to have good transparency and accountability that is just good for everybody.
Ken Tan:
Well, I know we talked about some of the practical ways, but I know for some of those that are listening, it’s probably too late. Fraud has already occurred. And so that’s where probably one of my last questions is if fraud occurs, what do you think are some of the first things that leadership should do?
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah, I think it’s always, again, important to deal with these things swiftly and with good wisdom and collective wisdom of the leadership of the organization. So right off the bat, you need to have discussions with the appropriate level of leadership. So again, sometimes it involves a leader. So you’d go the step above. So if it’s a CFO, there’s concern, bring it to the president or CEO or senior pastor, et cetera. If it’s a senior level executive, CEO, pastor, leader, et cetera, take it to the audit committee chair, the board chair, and get the right people together initially just to even have some initial discussion of, “Okay, what are we actually dealing with here? What are the suspicions? What could it involve?”
But then secondly, engage legal counsel. And some organizations larger will have in-house counsel, pull them in right off the bat. If you don’t, but you have some external legal counsel that is on retainer that you contact as needed, pull them in early on as well, because there’s a lot of implications to fraud from an employment law standpoint, more times not, there’s going to be a termination involved or there’s going to be a leave of absence while you investigate a matter to verify whether it is in fact or not fraud.
So you got to navigate that again with expertise from a legal context. So engage the legal counsel. And then the other thing just to be succinct that I would reference is years ago I wrote an article called Fraud Happen Now What? And that’s actually available on our website and it’s just there to be a resource for organizations that it lists off some of these kinds of steps. If we suspect fraud, what should we do? Here’s the steps we should take and what questions should we ask? And I actually put on there probably over 20 questions of just things to start asking. Again, it’s the kinds of things we ask when we’re conducting a forensic investigation just to help make sure that we’re managing this crisis with wisdom, with good ethics, and making sure that we’re protecting the organization as a whole and the constituents of the organization.
Ken Tan:
Well, I think this also talks about that old phrase, an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure. You can just tell that the prevention stuff we talked about was pretty simple, but if it already happens, the amount of steps needed to really resolve this makes it a much bigger undertaking, not just financially, but even time, relationally, all these things that have to come to place to really help address the situation that happened. You start realizing, it’d be so much easier if we were on the preventative side, not having to react as well.
Nathan Salsbery:
Absolutely. I mean, it’s worth the time and effort to really think through what are our processes, what are our controls in place? How have we segregated duties? And then again, you can’t prevent 100%, but by having those good processes and controls in place, you’re much more likely to detect it timely. So even if it does occur, it’s one thing to find it a month or two after it has started. It’s a much different, Ken, we’ve seen this when we’re finding it out four years after it’s been happening. And that’s when the dollar amounts get so significant. And it’s a big headache and a big risk to just the ongoing life of the organization.
Ken Tan:
I’m pretty sure, especially for the ones we’ve done discovery calls and fully do the engagement, what they initially think is the losses is actually closer to double after we start booking because of just the extent. And we just start realizing it can be mind-boggling just the numbers too as well.
Chris Purnell:
Absolutely.
Ken Tan:
Just think for us, we’re just saying the awareness that’s so important for us just to raise it, look, this is prevalent, but if you have some of these processes in place, because I think that this is where a lot of times it turns out, and I think we could probably talk in another episode about profiles of fraud service is a lot of them have a clean record. So how is it you or the background check they’re going to find it? And what we say is, “Well, if you have some good policies and internal controls in place, typically that person that was wanting to enact, take advantage of that organization will eventually leave because they know they’re not going to be able to do anything and they’ll go elsewhere.” And that’s like I said, we just try to say, “Look, you can’t figure everything out, but hopefully you can have do things to minimize it as much as possible.”
Nathan Salsbery:
Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s just a culture component there too of creating that culture where someone that doesn’t want to be above board and transparent in operating at the highest level of integrity, they’ll probably self-opt out because it was realized the opportunity’s not what they had hoped it would be.
Ken Tan:
Oh yeah. Well, as we start landing the plane there, I guess is there any final piece of advice you have for our church leaders and those listening about church or ministry fraud?
Nathan Salsbery:
I guess maybe not so much advice is just reiterating that it’s a risk for everybody. And I love to point out that even within Jesus’ own ministry, the sin that Judas was committing before he even betrayed Jesus was fraud. And when he rebuked Mary for anointing Jesus with the expensive perfume, it’s interesting that the gospel John where it says that he said, “We should be selling this to give to the poor.” And the verse right after that says he didn’t say it because he had concern for the poor, he said it because he was stealing from the ministry purse. And so it’s been an issue since even before the time of Jesus, but it impacted even that and God’s providence was part of just how Judas’s heart was hardened to ultimately sell Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. So it’s a real thing. And when we’re dealing with ministry dollars, those are dollars given as unto the Lord.
So how much more should we just make sure we’re putting in the time and effort and the thought and intentionality to have good processes, good controls in place? So I think it’s a challenge for all of us in the ministries we serve on the board or the roles we play in our churches, just to really think through that, how do we protect the integrity of the ministry?
Ken Tan:
A lot of times church leaders say, “This is such a sensitive topic. I’d rather just avoid it.” But if you try to avoid it’ll eventually come up in front of you. And so this is where for us, we just want to encourage our listeners just to just do a good inventory, even for your own ministry, your own church. Ask some of these questions, utilize the resources we have online. Nathan, you mentioned that your questionnaire, even some of the considerations of articles. The whole hope here is that you are not alone and you don’t know where to start. You can at least start with some of the things we have for them.
And that’s why I’m so excited about just being able to have these conversations with you, Nathan, and we get to do these engagements because of the fact that our goal is to use this as a way to raise awareness that, “Look, I would love for it being down the road that we don’t get phone calls like this anymore because it’s all been completely eliminated.” I know that’s not going to happen because that’s human nature, but if we could start seeing that trend going down because people are starting to implement some of these practical processes, that’s a huge win for us.
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah. Yep, absolutely.
Ken Tan:
Well, thank you again, Nathan, for taking time out of your schedule to meet. And I loved some of the stories. And I know we get the chance to keep working together on these things. And my hope is in some of our future episodes, we’ll have some more conversations on even maybe Indiana basketball. Well, we’ll see. Maybe we’ll go back to that topic one day, right?
Nathan Salsbery:
Yeah. We’ll enjoy the IU football while we have it. And enjoy your time in Houston, Ken. I’ll be curious to hear where you’re at next.
Ken Tan:
Oh, yeah. Well, it’ll be another fun little trivia. But again, appreciate you, Nathan, and look forward to some future episodes with you.
Nathan Salsbery:
Thank you, Ken. Appreciate it.
Chris Purnell:
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