The Pbs & J Accounting Scandal

An implicit theme of this case that I want students to recognize is the contrast between the persistent and vigorous efforts of David Sokol to “get to the bottom” of the suspicious items he uncovered in JWP’s accounting records versus what Judge William Conner referred to as the “spinelessness” of JWP’s auditors. The JWP audits were similar to most problem audits in that the auditors encountered numerous red flags and questionable entries in the client’s accounting records but, for whatever reason, apparently failed to thoroughly investigate those items. On the other hand, Sokol refused to be deterred in his investigation of the troubling accounting issues that he discovered. The relationships that existed between members of JWP’s accounting staff and the Ernst & Young audit team apparently influenced the outcome of the JWP audits. Of course, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

2) Frank A. Tassone; the former business manager, Pamela Gluckin; and an accounting clerk, Debra Rigano, who is a niece of Ms. Gluckin embezzled money in a scheme in which Dr. Tassone and Ms. Gluckin and nine of their family members and friends charged $5.9 million for personal items and cash advances on 74 personal credit cards. Then Ms. Gluckin and Dr. Tassone used district checks to pay those bills. The audit found that Dr. Tassone and

In September 2005, a former senior executive from Wal-Mart de Mexico sent an email to a high-ranking Wal-Mart lawyer, referencing on how Wal-Mart de Mexico had bribed foreign officials to expedite permits to win market control in Mexico. The emails and subsequent conversations gave specific names, dates and bribe amounts. Wal-Mart followed up with an internal investigation and eventually found a paper trail of suspect payments. In addition, they found documentation implicating that, not only did the top Wal-Mart de Mexico executives know about the payments, but they had also taken pre-cautions to hide them. The lead investigator documented the findings by stating

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act and the Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act, was signed into law on July 30, 2002, by President George W. Bush as a direct response to the corporate financial scandals of Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco International (Arens & Elders, 2006; King & Case, 2014;Rezaee & Crumbley, 2007). Fraudulent financial activities and substantial audit failures like those of Arthur Andersen and Ernst and Young had destroyed public trust and investor confidence in the accounting profession. The debilitating consequences of these perpetrators and their crimes summoned a massive effort by the government and the accounting profession to fight all forms of corruption through regulatory, legal, auditing, and accounting changes.

On January 8, 2014, the U.S. Attorney has stated that the BISD school District Finance Officer and Controller, managed to embezzle over $4,000,000 from the school district by creating fake companies and issuing purchase orders and invoices that paid directly to an account

The word “fraud” was magnified in the business world around the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. No one had seen anything like it. Enron, one of the country’s largest energy companies, went bankrupt and took down with it Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest audit and accounting firms in the world. Enron was followed by other accounting scandals such as WorldCom, Tyco, Freddie Mac, and HealthSouth, yet Enron will always be remembered as one of the worst corporate accounting scandals of all time. Enron’s collapse was brought upon by the greed of its corporate hierarchy and how it preyed upon its faithful stockholders and employees who invested so much of their time and money into the company. Enron seemed to portray that the goal of corporate America was to drive up stock prices and get to the peak of the financial mountain by any means necessary. The “Conspiracy of Fools” is a tale of power, crony capitalism, and company greed that lead Enron down the dark road of corporate America.

HealthSouth Corporation was one of the largest publicly traded owners of rehabilitative hospitals within the Untied States and paved the way for its industry. However, prior to 2003 the company had a very dark secret: fraud. In 2003 HealthSouth was accused of making $2.7 billion in false journal entries in the company’s system (Helios, 2013). These false entries allowed the corporation to inflate its earnings and revenue. While the corporation was dabbling in a fraudulent, aggressive account system, auditors were unable to detect the extent of the fraud occurring. If not for Michael Vines and Weston Smith, HealthSouth Corporation might have continued its false entries and continued deceiving shareholders and even Wall Street itself. HealthSouth serves as a historical example of how corporate culture can use fraud and deception schemes to not only rationalize what it is doing, which is an element of the fraud triangle, but also encourage fraudulent financial statements.

In Miami an accounting clerk by the name of Migdalia Ruiz was a able to steal 85,000 from the city of Miami over the course of a couple of years. She too checks from solid waste fees, false alarm fees, liens and business tax receipts from the government and directed the checks to her own personal bank account. She was only caught after leaving her job and the city’s bank informed the government that a check that the city deposited had already been cashed.

The environmental, social and economic chaos opened the way to abnormal conditions in the deviance of the funds. In these cases there are always people who want to take advantage of the situation, part of society responded generously while others reacted with greedy. The problem of the missing funds was a crime because it violated not only the state but also federal laws regarding the use of false documentation to receive funds. Hurricane Katrina caused the activity of the opportunists. As is common, disasters bring out the worst and the best of any individual in our society.

According to Daniel F. Dooley (2008), a member of the Commercial Fraud Taskforce, financial fraud with private middle-market companies is on the rise. In fact, Mr. Dooley believes that he has seen more instances of fraud in the past two years than in the previous ten. He notes seven areas in which financial fraud has increased over the past few years:

The financial fraud, which took place at Waste Management Inc., brought a number of changes in the accounting world which are being experienced currently in the world. First, it awakened investors to the crisis in the accounting world. For instance, Roger Hamilton, a manager of John Hancock Value Funds, succeeded in unloading $600,000 of his shares before total collapse of stock, even though he

A number of financial statement frauds went undetected from auditors in past and attracted a high profile attention. The businessmen add fake assets or transfer the assets of companies to their personal assets and result in accounting scandals when the affected companies are bankrupted or are even close of bankruptcy. Just to mention a few names, accounting scandals of Enron, AOL Time Warner and Xerox are among the hottest accounting scandals of the century. This means that despite presence of professional auditors accounting scandals happen and there is a need to learn from the mistakes of the auditors who overlooked these activities. In this report the case study of Xerox is analyzed in detail to highlight violations of accounting principles and present an example from which lessons can be learnt for the future.

Main character in this fraud is Mr. Dennis Kozlowski, the CEO of Tyco. He misappropriated around $270 million through unauthorized loans, sale of Tyco securities and undisclosed compensation. In order to conceal these amounts, the compensation was incorrectly offset against unrelated gains. This led to violation of GAAP and misrepresented financial statements. For example, $44.6 million of bonuses were offset against gain from IPO of one of Tyco’s subsidiaries. They have also netted the bonuses with gain on disposal of business and gain on sale of common stock. According to ASC 718 Compensation, these and other bonuses should have been disclosed in operating earnings and should have decreased operating income. However, since they were offset against one-time gains, they did not have any impact on operating income. This “hiding” of compensation occurred on several occasions – the expenses were also netted against gain on sale

According to statement made by Dunn, the most crucial duties of the board are duties of deliberation and candor that depend upon absolute trust that is held by each director and towards other confidentiality.

This paper will discuss the corporation WorldCom, a telecommunications company that was based in Mississippi. In 2002 WorldCom was involved in one of the largest accounting scandals in the United States. WorldCom inflated its assets by nearly $11 billion dollars, which eventually lead to about 30,000 employees losing their jobs, as well as, 180-billion dollars in losses for its investors. The CEO at the time of this accounting fraud was Bernard Ebbers and led to him receiving a 25-year prison sentence. This paper will go into the details of how WorldCom was able to manipulate its accounting records to deceive its internal auditors, as well as, investors.