...Introduction: Corporate fraud is the activities that are not accepted ethically and legally, which are done in a dishonest manner to give the person/firm an advantage by manipulating the firm’s information for their own benefits. It is also related to adverse selection problem which is a situation in which insiders, with inside information, earn more profits at the expense of outside investors. Similarly, corporate fraud involves deception to make personal/firm profits at the cost of others. Corporate fraud can happen in all organizations, regardless of their size, type (private or public corporation), industry (production or services) in any country. Corporate fraud could be either for personal gains, where managers use earnings management for their own benefits to maximize their utility while shirking, or to bail out a firm which performance is not up to par. The likelihood of fraud is increased in economic downturn and recession. As companies downsize in recession, cutbacks and cost control measures will often find employees with less than expected earnings, that will result in lowered utility and shirking. “Fraud is often explained in terms of the fraud triangle which describes that fraud is most likely to occur when there is an overlap of an incentive or pressure to commit fraud, the opportunity to commit fraud, and arationalisation therefore. Surveys are regularly carried out to estimate the true scale and cost of fraud to business and society. While findings vary...
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...Corporate Fraud and Schemes ACC 571 – Forensic Accounting October 20, 2014 Russell Wasendorf was the owner and chief executive officer of Peregrine Financial Group based in Cedar Falls Iowa. He stared the business in 1967 in Iowa and later decided to move the company to Chicago. Not long ago, he decided to move the company back to Iowa convincing many of his colleagues to move with him. Peregrine Financial Group had many customers and clients who trusted that the money invested and managed by Peregrine would be safe and potentially provide strong dividends in the future. In July 2012, the company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and Russell Wasendoff was arrested for corporate fraud. According to the IRS (irs.gov), Wasendorf stole more than $215,000,000 from more than 13,000 victims over the course of nearly 20 years. The fraud that was committed was misappropriation of funds and falsifying bank statements. National Futures Association, the regulators for Peregrine, came to the harsh realization when they decided to change the audit procedure to online. According to New York Times (www.nytimes.com) “The N.F.A. was in the middle of changing part of its audit process to an online platform, where bank statement information would feed directly to the regulator. This month, Peregrine was facing its first audit under the new system, called confirmation.com, and Mr. Wasendorf was opposed to the system”. Previously, Wasendorf was the only person...
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...Report on Corporate Frauds & the Role of the auditors: Bangladesh Perspective Faculty of Business Studies University of Dhaka SUBMITTED TO Tahmina Ahmed Lecturer Accounting & Information Systems University of Dhaka SUBMITTED BY Group 18 Date of submission:10.11.14 Group members Name | ID | 1.Sajjad Hossain Sohan | 18022 | 2.Rubina Akther | 18048 | 3.Mohammad Saadman | 18052 | 4.Rumi Akther | 18066 | 5.Hilary Talukder | 18099 | November 5, 2014 Tahmina Ahmed Lecturer Dept. of Accounting & Information Systems University of Dhaka Subject: Submission of report on “Corporate fraud & the role of the auditor: Bangladesh Perspective” Dear Sir, We are honored and pleased to inform you that as per the requirements, we worked on the issue of the preparation of a report based on the corporate frauds & the role of the auditor in Bangladesh perspective. To fulfill the report objective, we analyzed & reviewed some of the secondary information available on the internet related to the topic.. Based on our classroom knowledge on the related issues, we tried to make the report as specific and unique as possible. We humbly submit this report for your review and feedback. Preparation of this report demanded a minimum level of working knowledge of the process of audit & assurance . We also tried to follow your instructions properly now and when necessary. We would like to request you to allow us to submit...
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...The Clayton Act, and The Robinson-Patman Act) 111. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 makes it illegal for an American businessperson to give anything of value to any foreign official in order to influence an official decision. A. Applicability of the Act B. Prohibitions under the Act C. Penalties for Violations of the Act 1. Criminal 2. Civil 3. others D. Defense under FCPA 1. Lawful payment 2. Bona fide expenditures E. Fraud/Scandal of the FCPA of 1977 1. Detection method 2. Importance of Early Detection 3. Big problems for small corporations/organizations 4. Types of fraud and who is involved 1V. Sarbanes Oxley Act A. The effects of Sarbanes-Oxley Act on corporate culture (1) Increase in accounting costs (2) Increased records-management requirements (3) Salary increases (4) Increase in audit fees B. Need for Continuous Auditing/ Continuous Monitoring and its benefits C. Role of internal Auditing and Management. D. Identification of Control Deficiencies – What is the Act doing to minimize. E. Fraud/Scandal, Waste,...
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...CORPORATE FRAUD & THE ROLES OF AUDITOR (BANGLADESH PERSPECTIVE) Submitted To: Tahmina Ahmed Lecturer Department Of Accounting And Information Systems University Of Dhaka. Submitted By: Group No. 02 ID 18003 18051 18053 18073 18089 18200 NAME Safiqur Rahman Mahadin Anik Mahmudul Islam Arnab Kumar Chakrabartty Abdullah Al Noman Namrata Chakma Date of Submission: November 11, 2014. 1|Page This Report Includes The Following Contents Chapter No. Contents Page No. 01.Introduction 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Introduction. Scope of the report. Objective of the report. Limitations of the report. What is corporate fraud? Kinds of corporate frauds. Reasons for corporate fraud. Auditor’s role. Bangladesh perspective. Findings of the study. 03 03 03 04 04 05 05 06 09 10 02.Literature Review 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 03.Findings Of The Study 3.1 04.Conclusion & Recommendations 4.1 4.2 Conclusion. Recommendations. 12 13 05. References. 5.1 References. 14 2|Page CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 WHAT IS CORPORATE FRAUD AND WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE REPORT? The term ‘Fraud’ essentially includes the use of deception to make some personal gains for oneself dishonestly obviously and create some losses for another within the organization or outside the organization. Although definitions of corporate fraud vary in different situations, most of them are based on these general themes. The term ‘Corporate Fraud’ usually includes activities such as corruption, misuse of accounts...
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...Midterm Exam Option #2 – A SPACER General Evaluation Corporate Fraud most likely Scenario The vision of STAPLES Office Solutions, Inc., a Business company, is to be the leader in providing innovative products and services that enable our customers to manage document workflow and increase efficiency. To facilitate this goal management is responsible for establishing and maintaining an adequate system of internal controls to provide reasonable assurance that the mission and objectives of the organization are achieved. As a Sr. Financial Analyst on the business information team the main fraud risks that affect my position and may impede STAPLES’s ability to reach these objectives are; theft of company property and resources, procurement fraud, and data/information risks. The first of the three, theft of company property and resources doesn’t involve the $100,000 digital duplicators, or the $50,000 multi function printers manufactured by my company. The most widespread problem involving theft at STAPLES involves ink and toner. STAPLES is a world leader in the manufacture and distribution of business information machines and as such we employee thousand of associates who do nothing but service the machines that are placed at our customers locations. While if one of the $100,000 machines would disappear it would take a million dollars in sales to recoup the profits, the opportunity and risk involved with pilfering these two ton, VW sized machines make them an unlikely target...
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...economy. Audits, which were conducted to assess the validity and reliability of a company’s financial statements, were not detecting the material misstatements in the statements. As a result, both the US Government and the accounting profession needed to come up with a way to prevent these immense frauds from occurring in the future. As a response to these large frauds, in 2002, the US Government passed the Sarbanes – Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) issued Statement on Auditing Standards No. 99(SAS No. 99) to improve investor confidence and the auditing function’s ability to detect material frauds. The intent of this thesis was to look at the fraudulent factors associated with several recent corporate frauds and compare them to the standards set by SAS No. 99. Through the analysis conducted, this thesis looks at the relationships between pressures, opportunities, and rationalizations made during the act of fraud. Table of Contents ABSTRACT ii INTRODUCTION 1 Sarbanes – Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) 1 Statement of Auditing Standards Number 99 (SAS No. 99) 4 Parts of the Fraud Triangle 5 Types of Fraud 11 INSTANCES OF FRAUD 13 Enron Corporation 13 Adelphia Communications Corporation 17 AOL Time Warner, Inc. 20 Bristol-Myers Squibb Company 25 Global Crossing Limited 27 K-Mart 30 Tyco International, Ltd. 34 WorldCom 37 HealthSouth Corporation 41 CONCLUSION 45 Appendix: SOX Titles and Sections...
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...HealthSouth: Fraud, Greed & Corporate Governance Marilyn J. Bordeaux HCS 5339 Rachael Kehoe HealthSouth: Fraud, Greed & Corporate Governance During the 1990s, Richard M. Scrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth Corporation, engineered many acquisitions of rehabilitation clinics, outpatient surgical care operators, nursing homes and other health care companies. In 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused the company and Scrushy of inflating earnings to the tune of $1.4 billion since 1999. In November 2003, a federal grand jury indicted Scrushy on 85 counts including conspiracy, securities fraud, money laundering and charges related to overstating HealthSouth’s earnings by nearly $3.0 billion. According to federal investigators, the company overstated earnings to meet analysts’ earning estimates, while hiding the accounting fraud from the auditors. However, questions were raised whether the auditors failed to find or simply overlooked the fraud at HealthSouth. Central to the investigation was the issue of what role Scrushy played in “cooking the books.” However, as the case unfolded, it highlighted many other issues such as: The role of Board of Directors in corporate governance; the role of the auditors; the effect of conflict of interest between an accounting firm and its consulting arm on auditing; whether the relationship between an investment bank and a company affects the quality of the bank’s research reports on the company; whether the executive...
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...RESTORING TRUST AFTER FRAUD: DOES CORPORATE GOVERNANCE MATTER? David B. Farber The Eli Broad Graduate School of Management Michigan State University N232 Business College Complex East Lansing, MI 48824-1122 e-mail: farberd@msu.edu (517) 432-0615 First Draft: January 2003 Current Draft: January 7, 2004 This paper is adapted from my dissertation completed at Cornell University. I would like to thank my committee chairperson, Julia D’Souza, for her unwavering support and guidance in the development of this paper. I also thank my other committee members - Charles Lee, Tim Mount, and Bhaskaran Swaminathanas well as Daniel Beneish, Walt Blacconiere, Tom Dyckman, John Elliott, Sue Haka, Marilyn Johnson, Tom Linsmeier, Kathy Petroni, Mike Shields, and workshop participants at The University of California at Berkeley, Cornell University, Georgia State University, Indiana University, Michigan State University, The University of Nebraska, New York University, and Syracuse University for their suggestions and comments. I appreciate the valuable comments I received at the 2002 AAA meeting. I thank Mark Beasley for sharing his sample of fraud firms. I am also grateful to the librarians at Cornell and the University of Rochester for their invaluable assistance, with special thanks to Don Schnedeker. I thank I/B/E/S for analyst data. I thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions that have greatly improved this paper. Finally, I acknowledge the financial support...
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...WorldCom took the telecom industry by storm when it began a frenzy of acquisitions in the 1990s. The low margins that the industry was accustomed to weren't enough for Bernie Ebbers, CEO of WorldCom. From 1995 until 2000, WorldCom purchased over sixty other telecom firms. In 1997 it bought MCI for $37 billion. WorldCom moved into Internet and data communications, handling 50 percent of all United States Internet traffic and 50 percent of all e-mails worldwide. By 2001, WorldCom owned one-third of all data cables in the United States. In addition, they were the second-largest long distance carrier in 1998 and 2002. How the Fraud Happened So what happened? In 1999, revenue growth slowed and the stock price began falling. WorldCom's expenses as a percentage of its total revenue increased because the growth rate of its earnings dropped. This also meant WorldCom's earnings might not meet Wall Street analysts' expectations. In an effort to increase revenue, WorldCom reduced the amount of money it held in reserve (to cover liabilities for the companies it had acquired) by $2.8 billion and moved this money into the revenue line of its financial statements. That wasn't enough to boost the earnings that Ebbers wanted. In 2000, WorldCom began classifying operating expenses as long-term capital investments. Hiding these expenses in this way gave them another $3.85 billion. These newly classified assets were expenses that WorldCom paid to lease phone network lines from other companies to...
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...Duke Energy makes life better for millions of people every day by providing electric and gas services in a sustainable way - affordable, reliable, and clean (quote www.duke-energy.com/about-us ). They became America's largest electric utility with 7.2 million suscribers after a merger with Progress Energy according to the New York Times. The article Duke Energy's Corporate Incompetence - or Fraud? consists of charges that Duke Energy gained hundreds of millions of dollars from charging improper rates and passing inappropriate expenses on to its small user customer base. The introduction of the article starts, either Duke Energy's accountants are grossly incompetent or the corporation has deliberately sought to improperly charge North Carolina's customers hundreds of millions of dollars each year. The first point of analysis is Duke Energy's attempt at overcharging customers and the North Carolina Utilities Comission Public Staff allowing them to circumvent penalties. Duke Energy ended up negotiating a secret deal with the public staff in which they overlooked the overcharges they caught, set minimum profit range higher than needed, and gave money back that they overcharged. The issue being raised is how this unethical deal-making is an abuse of the customers that the company is supposed to service. Another point of scrutiny is Duke Energy has a rate rigging scheme that charges small customers unfairly each year for power plants and power lines used by Duke's largest customers...
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...“Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act” and “and 'Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act”. The main objective of the act is to protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures. New aspects are created by SOX act for corporate accountability as well as new penalties for wrong doings. It was basically introduced after major corporate and accounting scandals including the scandals of Enron, WorldCom etc so that the same kind of scandals do not repeat again. There are 11 titles on the act. Each title consists of several sections. The Securities and Exchange Commission needs to implement rulings on the requirements to comply with the law. These major elements are- 1. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board: This title establishes the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. It provides specific processes and procedures for compliance audits, policies for control purposes. Basically it provides an oversight of public accounting firms that do auditing. 2. Auditor Independence: It provides standards for external auditor independence, so that conflicts of interest can be minimized. It also mentions the requirements for appointing new auditor and auditor reporting requirements. Auditing companies are prohibited from providing non-audit services (consulting) for the clients for whom they provide auditing services. 3. Corporate Responsibility: According to this title the senior executives must...
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...The Threat of Fraud Tracey Brewer American InterContinental University Security and Loss Prevention CRJS270-1301B-01 Jade Pumphrey March 28, 2013 Abstract Identity theft, whether on a personal or business level is a criminal act. So, for many years individuals have plotted and schemed to come up with scams to obtain personal information from other individuals or organization to either sabotage one’s reputation or obtain financial gain. Either way, this wave of criminal activity is wreaking havoc to innocent people and successful organizations everywhere. The Threat of Fraud Introduction Corporate fraud and executive identity theft are crimes that are on the rise. I don’t think corporations understand the impact this crime can have on their business. It only takes a few measures to ensure that the company is protecting against someone being able to access information that could bring the entire corporation to the ground. It can takes years to establish credit, build clientele and provide a service to the country or a community, however, it can only take the click of a mouse, that one email attachment or that one dishonest employee and your entire businesses financial data has been obtained, used or sold for the sole purpose of financial gain. Therefore, to protection your organization’s personal information. Well, it’s time to get the facts, take the necessary precautions, and start the process for what could be the first steps in protecting your organization...
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...advocates portraying it to be so. This concept of believing in corporate goodness is naïve. The cases involving Enron and WorldCom prove just that. This leads us to the taboos in corporate social responsibility discourse. These taboos are rarely discussed, yet it is a very important topic. According to Berger and Luckmann, "from the social constructionist's perspective, social reality is built around and becomes understood through discourse. However, some discourses have a higher 'truth' value than others. As a consequence they easily become generally accepted, sometimes even considered as absolute truths that are not easily questioned". Businesses, non-profit agencies and even the government are all victims of both fraud and theft on a daily basis. Business owners are sometimes blindsided by these actions and may be unaware of the fraud due to lack of accounting experience or expertise. In almost every community, large or small, there are news stories about theft from employees. In several cases, unfortunately, the theft is from those entrusted to perform accounting functions. By the time fraud or theft is detected, sometimes thousands and even millions of dollars are already missing. Another downfall of accounting fraud and theft is the potential for customers and investors to lose confidence in the company or organization’s management. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), some cases of accounting fraud and theft or not even reported. Companies fear the bad press...
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...resources, as well as content and concepts from the text. ANSWER I was overwhelmed while doing the internet news search to find an example of business that has abused its power. The search came up with so many examples that it made me realize that probably all the business abuse their position in some or the other way. There were many example to choose from but I chose “Corporate accounting scandal at Satyam “, which is also infamously called as India’s Enron. The reason why I selected this particular company is that I had my cousin brothers and sisters working for this company and this scandal affected our families in a big way. The background Scandals are like an iceberg, they represent the only visible catastrophic failure. Saytam Computers was founded By Mr. Ramalinga Raju who hailed form a traditional agriculture family of Andhra Pradesh, India in 1987 with a just 20 employees and converted the company got Public in 1992.The chairman of the company was the founder himself, Mr. Ramalinga Raju (Alias Raju) until January 7, 2009 when he resigned from the board of directors after admitting to corporate fraud. (Author HT correspondent, April, 9, 2015). The company offered consulting and information technology services to the various business sectors. The company had services in 66 countries and 53000 employees in 6 continents. It was listed on Bombay stock exchange, NSE & NYSE. The scam Ironically,...
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