From what I heard, the state used the wrong vendor number, meaning that she is some sort of vendor to the state.

Because she is a female, she is given preferential status for contracts with the state. She is considered a minority. Most of these people work out of home offices, and do nothing more that act as a middle person between the real vendor and the state, while getting a healthy 10% to 20% profit.

For example, the state prison needs to buy automotive parts for themselves. One of these "minority" vendors would be given the contract, the vendor has an account with a local parts store. When the prison needs parts the following happens: Someone at the prison calls the parts store and orders the part, the parts store delivers the part to the prison and charges the vendor. All the vendor does is bill the prison at a 20% markup, that's it, the vendor doesn't touch ar see the parts sold to the prison. The vendor gets 20% for pushing some paper around. To add insult to injury, the vendor doesn't pay the parts store until they get paid by the state. Most of the time, the state pays 60 to 90 days out. The vendor doesn't deal with any of the problems, such as bad cores or defects that aren't defects. They just sit back and collect our tax dollars for doing nothing, while the parts store has to eat returns that aren't defective and accept cores that won't be credited because they are misboxed or risk losing a account. The vendor has no risk, yet makes a net profit equal to that of the parts store when losses and delivery costs are factored in.



You can see that the mentality that it takes to be one of these vendors could make someone be so stupid as WVOtoGO mentions in his first post.

I don't think for a minute that this was a honest mistake by the state, the person who wrote the check probably was known to the lady in some way. I'm sure of it.