But Ben Probst and Jim Gilbert, partners in Provo-based Gilbert & Stewart, said they advised town officials that having the same person writing checks and maintaining financial records was not a good idea.
"Through the audit, we let them know that they had a segregation-of-duties problem," Gilbert said Tuesday. "It was a responsibility of the mayor and council to follow up on it."
Genola's former town clerk, Traci Wright, is facing 13 counts of forgery, 13 counts of misuse of public money and one count of theft.
In his state-of-the-town address last week, Mayor Eric Hazelet said Wright allegedly embezzled more than $240,000 over a period of six years. She resigned in August.
At that time, Hazelet told residents and elected officials that Gilbert & Stewart did not catch the irregularities in the records, and he said the town will be looking for another auditor.
"If they don't want to hire us, that's their prerogative," Gilbert said. But the auditors said they were not asked to do a fraud audit, but a financial-statement audit. Such an audit involves going over disbursements and expenditures to ensure they follow generally accepted accounting procedures, Probst said.
A fraud audit, on the other hand, involves a meticulous examination of all financial documents to track every single penny.
Hazelet, contacted earlier this week, said he could not comment on why the town didn't act on the auditors' recommendation as he was not mayor at the time. The mayor, who took office in 2006, said the town has since added a deputy clerk who comes in weekly and audits the financial records.
"That was a mechanism we have put in place going forward after reviewing our current process," Hazelet said.
