The Trial Balance is CFO.com’s weekly preview of stories, stats and events to help you prepare.
Part 1 — Caminar, a Bay Area nonprofit, says it has traced “suspicious invoices” to its former chief financial officer.
A San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit mental health provider says its former chief financial officer created a bogus vendor contract to snag nearly $100,000 for himself.
On April 3, mental health and substance use treatment group Caminar published a statement accusing ex-CFO Richard Williams of misappropriating $99,375 “for his own benefit.”
The story begins in spring 2025, when Caminar’s financial systems flagged a “suspicious invoice for consulting services that was submitted to us for payment.”
“Further examination by Caminar linked the invoice to other suspicious invoices and payments to what appeared to be a fictitious entity,” the statement said. “Additional analysis verified that the fictitious entity was directly associated with our then chief financial officer, Richard Williams, whom it appeared fabricated the entity, vendor contact and a contract to support the invoices to Caminar.”
The nonprofit said that it involved “multiple independent experts” to uncover what happened. Caminar has also reported the issue to law enforcement, which is conducting an ongoing investigation. “Additionally, we are pursuing efforts to recover the misappropriated funds from our former employee,” the organization said in the statement.
Caminar said that Williams resigned from his role in September 2025 while its own investigation was still underway.
In a statement to Bay Area News Group last week, Williams disputed Caminar’s account and denied embezzling funds. “The consulting work I performed for Caminar was at the direction of CEO Mark Cloutier,” Caminar told the media outlet. “I did not resign due to any ‘investigations.’”
A police spokesperson confirmed to Bay Area News Group that it is conducting an open investigation but declined to provide other information.
Williams started working as Caminar’s CFO in January 2024, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Part 2 — This week
Here’s a list of important market events slated for the week ahead.
Monday, April 13
- Existing home sales, March
Tuesday, April 14
- NFIB optimism index, March
- Producer Price Index, March
- Core PPI, March
Wednesday, April 15
- Import price index, March
- Empire State manufacturing survey, April
- Home builder confidence index, April
- Fed Beige Book
Thursday, April 16
- Initial jobless claims
- Philadelphia Fed manufacturing survey, April
- Industrial production and capacity utilization, March
Friday, April 17 — None scheduled.
Part 3 — Quote of the week
“I have found that a lot of inefficiency in government is not caused by too many people as much as too many manual workarounds, too little integration and too little willingness to stop doing low-value work. The answer is not simply cutting. It is redesigning.”
Kevin Bueso
CFO, Village of Oak Park, Illinois
In a recent interview with CFO.com, Kevin Bueso, CFO of Oak Park, Illinois, shared the biggest challenges to running finance for local governments, why he is careful with the word “bloat” when discussing public agencies and how he knew it was time to move into his next finance job.
