A Case Of Accounting Fraud

Companies create complex accounting schemes to boost revenues to make investors think that the stock price of that actual company holds the price that the company is falsely promoting, to create a false expectation for investors to keep investing large amounts of money in their stocks and generate profit from that false practice. An example of fraudulent practices against company and client investors was the case of Bernard Madoff from Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. which committed decades of long fraud. (Stempel, 2015). Bernard Madoff plead guilty in 2009 and was sentenced one hundred fifty years of incarceration.

The stakeholders in this fraudulent case of WorldCom consist of Bernie Ebbers, Scott Sullivan, Buford Yates, David Myers, Cynthia Cooper, and Betty Vinson belong to the company. While the other stakeholders would consist of the creditors, Andersen (accounting firm), investors, and the public. This fraudulent act committed within WorldCom impacted every single stakeholder in a way. Either in a negative or positive way, most of the impact was caused with harm to everyone. The main individuals such as Ebbers, Sullivan, and Vinson all had major consequences as resulting with the fraud. Criminal trials were a major result with their fraudulent acts within WorldCom. Cooper was a lifesaver by most of the community. Aside from these individuals, the rest also got affected by the fraud. Investments conducted by the investors were all lost within the fraud process. The impact towards much of the image for Andersen was ruined. Many of the public lost their trust on the honesty and professionalism of Andersen and other certified public accounting firms. The entire employees from the top management to the smaller group of workers stayed unemployed and some with criminal punishment.

We already paid invoice#33806/17777 (please see below). As for Invoice#10225, Tina Scheiderwent our general/cost accounting manager had just mention to me today that she had been trying to get a hold of you guys about the SRS for this invoice but so far no response and had asked me to see if I can get a hold of you guys on my end. I was just about to email you. So do you guys have the SRS (Service Record Sheet) for this invoice?

WorldCom and The Mississippi Scheme are both large financial scandals that have occurred. WorldCom was a telecommunication company that overstated their cash flow by reporting $7.6 billion in operating expenses as capital expenses. WorldCom is the largest accounting scandal in US history as of March 2002. The Mississippi Scheme was a business scheme that destroyed the economy of France during the 1700’s. The scheme involved the loss of paper money’s purchasing power as a result of asset inflation. Both WorldCom and The Mississippi Scheme were frauds involving manipulation to create higher stock prices and dubious practices within the organizations to keep the public unaware.

Some industry-specific factors, such as having valuable near-cash assets, can increase the organization's vulnerability. Also they will need to rationalize the actions as justifiable. The individuals committing the fraud must first convince themselves that their behavior is acceptable or will be temporary. For example, Barry Minkow’s believed that the lies and deceit are for the betterment of his company and that with time everything will eventually return to normal.

(Farrell, 2005, para 1). Unfortunately for Ebbers, the grand jury wasn’t ignorant to the facts of the case and found Ebbers guilty on nine counts of fraud. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Many critics felt that the sentence was too harsh and others not harsh enough. The sentencing of Ebbers did not change the situation of the shareholders and employees who lost more than $100 billion in stock value, 17,000 jobs and their entire retirement savings. Ebbers was allowed to keep one of his homes, $50,000 in cash and a retirement account (Ernst & Young, 2005, para 6). Many supporters of Ebbers still questioned how much of a role he actually played in masterminding the WorldCom scandal. The

As requested I have completed an analysis of the accounting fraud case at Computer Associates (CA) in preparation of your speech at the American Accounting Associations annual meeting. I have structured my analysis to correspond to six key questions that arose from the case and Stephen Richards actions while Head of Global Sales at Computer Associates.

WorldCom was the ultimate success story among telecommunications companies. Bernard Ebbers took the reigns as CEO in 1985 and turned the company into a highly profitable one, at least on the outside. In 2002, Ebbers resigned, WorldCom admitted fraud and the company declared bankruptcy (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, &Wright 2007). The company was at the heart of one of the biggest accounting frauds seen in the United States. The demise of this telecommunications monster can be accredited to many factors including their aggressive-defensive organizational culture based on power and the bullying tactics that they employed. However, this fiasco could have been prevented if WorldCom had designed a system of checks and balances that would have

As we look back on the first decade of the 21st Century, we see that Corporate America and the Financial Markets were riddled with corruption and fraud. At the beginning of the decade we saw the likes of Enron and WorldCom become insolvent due to accounting frauds of epic proportions. The one case that stands out amongst all of them is the Bernard Madoff case, which is considered to be the largest fraud case of all time. “Madoff managed to lure billions of dollars away from huge charities, as well as wealthy individuals in both the United States and Europe by getting them to invest in his hedge fund. He did so by claiming extraordinary returns (generally

P., & Coulter, M. K., 2012, p. 152), although it seems none of WorldCom’s executive management team seemed to feel this way. Many steps could have been taken to prevent the collapse of the WorldCom empire, but only a few key managers held the power and none were willing to take action. One control that did not exist in WorldCom’s culture was allowing both internal and external auditors access to all necessary documents and statements. Without full disclosure of these items no one could see how many risks the company was taking by making fraudulent entries against their books. Also the external audit team, Arthur Anderson, held WorldCom as one of its best customers which was a major conflict of interest. This relationship lead to many fundamental mistakes from Anderson not keeping pressure on WorldCom and getting all vital information that would prove how poorly the company was being run. Had they been operating transparently, auditors and employees would have seen the accounting deception and could potentially have stopped it prior to the company’s collapse. In addition, by employing multiple auditing firms many of the mistakes being made may have been caught and discontinued from the beginning.

Financial statement fraud is usually a means to an end rather than an end in itself. When people "cook the books" they may doing it to "buy more time" to quietly fix business problems that prevent their entities from achieving its expected earnings or complying with loan covenants (Fraud Magazine, 2014. It may also be done to obtain or renew financing that would not be granted or would be smaller if honest financial statements were provided. People intent on profiting from crime may commit financial statement fraud to obtain loans they can then siphon off for personal gain or to inflate the price of the company 's shares, allowing them to sell their holdings or exercise stock options at a profit (Fraud Magazine, 2014). However, in many past cases of financial statement fraud, the perpetrators have gained little or nothing personally in financial terms. Instead the focus appears to have been preserving their status as leaders of the entity - a status that might have been lost

Ebbers was eventually charged with fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison in what some said was “was the toughest sentence imposed on an executive since the fall of Enron in 2001” (Associated Press, 2005). It became clear to prosecutors that Ebbers was aware of the specific boosting of quarterly growth numbers and that he created an environment where the appearance of rapid growth and expansion of the company should trump ethical behavior, such as accurate accounting and keeping vital information from board members and shareholders (Trevino & Brown, 95). He inspired loyalty as a leader through his massive and rapid success through the purchasing of other companies.

2001. It was the year that every individual; man, woman and children on Earth would remember. There was the September 11 event which was considered the worst terrorist attack that has happened in U.S. history, killing a total of 2, 977 people. And not long after that, in the business world, on December 2, the greatest corporate failure was exposed. The crash of Enron in US, followed by the worldwide collapse of its auditor, Arthur Andersen became one the most popular accounting scandal where it is still being talked about even after a decade has passed. Following this scandal, other massive organizations like WorldCom (2002), AIG (2004), and Satyam Computer Services (2009) shared the same fate. Since then, there have been questions being

A business can not work out without an account system, which includes internal. Internal controls are used by companies to make sure financial information is accurate and valid. Strong internal controls are signs of a financially healthy company and protect the company’s integrity. Strong internal controls can also increase a company’s profitability. There are several types of internal controls that companies used to protect themselves such as: Segregation of duties, asset purchases, supervisor review, internal audits and adequate documents and records. This paper will discuss several topics from a case study about And the Fraud

There were several people responsible for the WorldCom scandal, as well as, whistleblowers that first discovered the accounting fraud. The former CEO, Bernard Ebbers was found to be the main offender of the fraud. He did it by capitalizing inflated revenues with phony accounting entries and he was eventually sentenced to 25-years for fraud, conspiracy and filing false documents with regulators. Scott Sullivan, the former CFO, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and was sentenced to 5-years after testifying against Bernard Ebbers. The former Director of General Accounting, David Myers, pleaded guilty to