Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the U.S. Customs Service's actions to address internal control weaknesses in reconciling collections with bank deposits.
GAO found that: (1) Customs reconciled about $45.3 million of a $53.5-million discrepancy GAO previously identified between its reported collections and deposits by either locating previously unrecorded deposit confirmations or obtaining supporting documentation from the Department of the Treasury's Financial Management Service; (2) due to a lack of documentation, $8.2 million of the discrepancy remained unaccounted for and unreconciliable; (3) Customs may never be able to determine whether this unresolved amount represents theft, fraud, or internal accounting problems; (4) Customs was now able to reconcile its monthly collections with deposits, as a result of Automated Commercial System (ACS) enhancements and the addition of new accounting reports; and (5) Customs expected a new system the Department of Treasury was developing to resolve its 45-day lag problem in reconciling deposit data by obtaining deposit data sooner.
