Accounting scandals

and combat corporate and accounting fraud” (sec.gov/about/laws.shtml). “This Act requires that Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) in every annual report that they have reviewed the report and that it does not contain untrue statements or omissions of material facts, and are personally responsible for any misstatements”. HealthSouth…

course of their work lives. In recent years, around a decade ago one of the biggest multinational companies, “Enron” served as a synonym to white-collar crime and a formal definition of deviant behavior. The companies executives practiced false accounting; falsifying profit while inflating the value of Enron, by 2001 the company filed bankruptcy. Enron found a loop hole in society to avoid disciplinary actions, know also as punitive measures. One of the most important factors to the success of…

compared to those of Wall Street and if they did not meet the expectations, Scrushy would order the company’s management to adjust the earnings in order to meet them. This was done quarterly by the senior officers. Because of the poor management, the accounting department were given the entries without knowledge and then fixed. If the CEO was allowing the management to do this, the employees should have gone to another manager or CEO to speak to them about the issue that is going on. It is very…

infamous for its rise and more so for its fall. It’s bankruptcy and dissolution in 2001 was the largest in US corporate history to date when it occurred (Ferrell, Fraedrich, & Ferrell 487). The downfall of the company was brought about by shady accounting practices, a cutthroat company culture, a do-what-it-takes mantra. Ultimately, the prideful and greedy natures of the executives at the helm lead to the dissolution and investigation of the company that cost many people their livelihoods. All…

He was introduced to the carpet cleaning industry at the age of twelve by his mother, who worked as a telephone solicitor for a small carpet cleaning firm. Due to the lack of barriers to entry in this industry (no licensing requirements, no apprenticeships to be served and only minimal start-up capital needed), it is not hard for anyone to start a carpet cleaning company. But at the same time, no barriers to entry meant that there was a cutthroat competition within the industry and it was not…

Throughout my accounting studies so far, whistleblowers have been praised for their heroic actions that lead to the collapse of a giant corporation. However, the heroic actions and collapse are the seldom times that whistleblower protection laws work. In C. Fred Alford’s book: Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power, Mr. Alford explores the corporation and systems irrational behavior that makes whistleblowers lose faith in humanity and the justice system. Throughout the book, Mr.…

Introduction The key tenant of choosing a specific firm for analysis, is one having the history of outsourcing their Information Technology (IT), to a third party, only to regret the decision, and return, or back source, the IT service. An excellent example being the current largest bank in the United States; JP Morgan Chase. In 2004 JP Morgan Chase cancelled the remainder of a seven year, $5 billion IT contract with IBM. When the outsourcing deal was done in 2001, it was heralded as the…

Prudential The time when the protagonist Arthur Ryan was brought in as CEO, Prudential was charged with the largest investor fraud in US history. Prudential had defrauded investors of close to $8 billion and eventually had to shell out $371 million as settlements and fines. The most common solution to overcome the economic condition is layoffs. The critical time in highly competitive market leads Arthur Ryan to downsizing environment (p.1). Management decision in downsizing creates gap between…

I. John Benson, the Chief Financial Officer of DGSE, was found to manipulate the amounts of inventory for 2009 and 2010 by inflating millions of dollars (Jacobson, 2012). He exploited the inappropriate controls of DGSE and made some fraudulent accounting entries; He concealed them with false inventory details and management representation letter. Mr. Benson violated Section 17(a) (1)-(3), Section 13 (b) (5) and Section 13 (a) of the Exchange Act and was charged $75,000 as a penalty and was…

HealthSouth & Fraud Risk Factors HealthSouth was faced with a number of incentives and pressures that contributed to its fraudulent actions. For instance, the doubling of pretax earnings in 2000 although sales only grew about 3%, management’s commitment to meeting the Wall Street analysts’ expectations, and the significant financial interest and business dealings that the directors had with the company. The financial interest of the directors certainly increased their motivation and drives to…