...Innocent or Guilty: Bernie Ebbers Part in the Downfall of WorldCom The story surrounding the failure of WorldCom in the early 2000's is one that still haunts the financial market to this day. We often hear accounts of what happened within the telecom giant, but only one person could give a first-hand account of what she observed being the on the frontline and discovering one of the nation's biggest financial scandals of the last quarter century. Cynthia Cooper's account of her internal audit experience within WorldCom paints a bigger picture of what the scandal was like, how it was discovered, and who may have been involved. Even though we all know CEO Bernie Ebbers as the man behind the explosive growth of the firm, there still remains a lot of suspicion surrounding whether or not Bernie knew about the downfall of the firm. It is reasonable to believe that because he was WorldCom's main man, he would have known about the financial statement fraud that was occurring. But after reading Cooper's account of what occurred within the firm, I have to conclude that he didn't, in fact, know that CFO Scott Sullivan was instructing the accountants to cook the books. "Bert C. Roberts's testimony for the defense at Ebbers's criminal trial was in contrast to Sullivan's assertions earlier in the trial that he repeatedly told Ebbers in 2000 through 2002 that the company's accountants were making "adjustments that weren't right" in response to Ebbers's demands to "hit the numbers"...
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...Executive Summary In this case of accounting fraud at WorldCom, we have identified problems which had grew as the business scale of WorldCom (formerly known as LDDS) expanded, its direction of business started to drift away when its attempt to merge with Sprint was terminated by the U.S. Justice Department and the telecommunication industry started to deteriorate in 2000. The managers, particularly Bernard J. Ebbers and Scott Sullivan, struggled to maintain the company's main performance indicator, the Expense-to-Revenue (E/R) ratio in order to maintain its lucrative image. As the size of the organization increase through extensive mergers and acquisitions, the corporate culture of the company was all jumbled up and there were no uniformity in the management policies in each department. Furthermore, the company's focus on building revenue and disregarding the long-term costs had caused the company burdensome amount of expenses. While the telecommunication industry decline, the managers was forced to use extremity to sustain the good image of the business, thus started to manipulate the accounts, specifically through the release of accruals and capitalization of costs. The conduct was performed through monarch orders by the top management commanding the General Accounting Department to manipulate the accounts, restricting the scope of inquiry of the Internal Audit Department, misleading the External Auditor and also the Board of Directors. Executive Summary Table of Contents ...
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...Chapter 1 Ethical Reasoning: Implications for Accounting Ethics Reflection PENN STATE CHILD ABUSE SCANDAL: A CULTURE OF INDIFFERENCE What motivates an otherwise ethical person to do the wrong thing when faced with an ethical dilemma? Why did Joe Paterno and administrators at Penn State University look the other way and fail to act on irrefutable evidence that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had raped and molested young boys, an offense for which Sandusky currently is serving a 30- to 60-year sentence? According to the independent report by Louis Freeh that investigated the sexual abuse, four of the most powerful people at Penn State, including president Graham Spanier, athletic director Timothy Curley, senior vice president Gary Schultz, and head football coach Joe Paterno, sheltered a child predator harming children for over a decade by concealing Sandusky’s activities from the board of trustees, the university community, and authorities. The Freeh report characterizes the inactions as lacking empathy for the victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and wellbeing. Not only that, but they exposed the first abused child to additional harm by alerting Sandusky, who was the only one who knew the child’s identity, of what assistant coach Mike McQueary saw in the shower on the night of February 9, 2001.1 McQueary testified at the June 2012 trial of Sandusky that when he was a graduate assistant, he walked into the locker room and heard sounds of slapping...
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...Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Risk Analysis and Resolution of Client Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Understanding of Client’s Business Environment s e ct ion 3 Professional and ethical issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 S o l u tio nS inc lu de d in t h iS Section 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 A Day in the Life of Brent Dorsey Staff Auditor Professional Pressures Nathan Johnson’s Rental Car Reimbursement Solving Ethical Dilemmas–Should He Pocket the Cash? Recognizing It’s a Fraud and Evaluating What to Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 The Anonymous Caller WorldCom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 The Story of a Whistleblower . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79...
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