Finding 2022-001 ? Material Weakness Contact Persons: Marcie Jeffries, Finance Officer, or Trudy Murray, Executive Director Corrective Action: The Finance Department and the Management Department has worked closely with Bank of America at the onset of fraudulent activities from Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program to safeguard the assets. Through this process ACH Positive Pay was established for all ECHSA, Inc., bank accounts. This system allows CashPro to block unauthorized ACH transactions from posting to an account and allows the Finance Department to establish ACH authorization online. Further, the system safeguards the accounts by contacting the assigned contact person by phone or by sending a secure message via email of any fraudulent looking ACH pull downs. These activities will not be allowed to pass through the accounts without approval from the Finance Officer. The plan is to continue utilizing the ACH Positive Pay CashPro process to prevent fraudulent activities. As with other issues, COVID-19 Pandemic, for one reason or another, caused a high turnover with staff including the Finance Officer, who left without any notice, which resulted in the Finance Department being without an Officer in charge and payments to vendors becoming the sole responsibility of the Finance Technicians. After advertising the Finance Officer?s position unsuccessfully through several avenues, including local CPA offices, a candidate, Marcie Jeffries, was interviewed and hired effective July 25, 2022. Hiring Ms. Jeffries has allowed the internal controls for the Finance Department to be reestablished and the implementation of the current Finance Manual carried out. The Management Department, with the supervision of the Board of Directors Finance Officer will continue to make every effort necessary to safeguard ALL accounts, in particular, the Section 8 account that experienced the fraudulent activities.