New York City Department of Finance

Accountability Over Court, Trust and Bail Funds

The monies paid into the New York City courts are to be forwarded to the City’s Department of Finance. These monies include bail postings, payments made pursuant to court orders, and funds from estates controlled by Public Administrators. We found that the Department was able to reconcile records of the total amounts of these funds to the amounts on deposit with its banks. However, the Department was unable to reconcile the individual ledger accounts for the funds to the amounts in the banks. At the time of our audit, there were unresolved discrepancies of about $3.3 million for the bail funds and $10.8 million for the court and trust funds.

Department officials acknowledged that they had been unable to reconcile these differences and stated that, in their opinion, the differences were due to errors in the accounting system that processed the detailed transactions. They stated that the accounting system was out of date and a new system was required, but funds were not available for a new system. We recommended that certain actions be taken to strengthen accountability over the funds until a new system could be implemented.

For a complete copy of Report 2007-N-8 click here.
For a copy of the associated follow-up report click here.