of the loans, however, including the one for $63,500, far exceeded his lending limit. In addition, all loan applications should have been accompanied by a report on the applicant's credit history, purchased from an independent credit rating firm. The loan taken out in a fictitious name would not have had a credit report and should have been flagged by a loan review clerk at the bank's headquarters.
News reports raised several questions about why the fraud had not been detected earlier. State regulators had examined the bank's books in September 1986. The bank's own internal auditors also failed to detect the fraud. In checking for bad loans, however, bank auditors do not examine all loans and generally focus on loans much larger than the ones in question. In addition, Greater Providence had recently dropped its computer services arrangement with a local bank in favor of an out-of-state bank, and this changeover may have reduced effectiveness of the bank's control p the dures. Finally, bank's loan review clerks were