We reviewed these payments to determine correctness of the account charged. For selected quarters, we also compared the list of refund payees to an FCC employee listing. This was done to determine if any employees were receiving refunds of fees. We felt that if any employee who received a fee refund this represented an inconsistency that should be investigated further. A major area that we focused on was a search for duplicate payments.
Duplicates are a pair of records where at least one key field value matches in both records.
A key value can be also a combination of fields, all of which must be the same in at least two records to represent a questionable item. The more key fields that match, the better likelihood that the record pair may represent a questionable item. Examples of duplicates include two disbursement records with the same invoice number or two records with the same payment number and date . Two payments on the same date, for the same amount with the same invoice or contract amount may indicate duplicates. Although it is by no means proof of an irregularity, the presence of duplicate invoice numbers merits investigation .