Has anyone ever caught a hired marketing firm or SEO expert funneling funds from a clients Adwords account into one or more Adsense accounts controlled by the firm/expert ?

Now by itself this is pretty much harmless. I don't see anything wrong with a firm using its' own network of sites to advertise another clients site. Given Adwords is a Google thing, I figure site owners are probably a little more comfortable about dumping funds into Adwords and hiring an expert to take care of it than they would be about advertising directly on a firms network of sites.

When a firm is controlling the Adwords account, they not only know which ads are going to be running and how much they're paying per-click, but they can control placements of those ads, meaning they can place them on their own networks spots.

Still, not really anything shady going on here.

Now what if this firm, knowing all these details, has a "paid to click" business going secretly on the side or owned by someone else ?
They know where ads are going to be, and how much they can pay someone to click them and still turn a profit.

So not only is there the click-fraud going on in this scenario, we would also have the embezzlement factor which is probably harder to link up than the click-fraud bit.

I dunno, sometimes I get these crazy thoughts and feel the need to say something about them so I know there's something out there to keep me from trying it myself.